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BETWEEN ERAS 



FROM 



CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



BY 

ALBION W. SMALL 
n 



A CYCLE OF CONVERSATIONS AND 
DISCOURSES WITH OCCASIONAL 
SIDE-LIGHTS UPON THE 
SPEAKERS 



INTER-COLLEGIATE PRESS 
KANSAS CITY. - MISSOURI 






Copyright 1913 

By 

Inter-Collegiate Press 



241 



A7S 



'CI.A347634 



A./ 



DEDICATED 

TO THE FERTILE FELLOW- 
SHIP OF MEN AND WOMEN 
WHO RATE THE INTER- 
ESTS OF THE WHOLE 
ABOVE THE CLAIMSOF 
THEIR SPECIAL KIND. 



IF ALL MEN SAW THINGS 
FROM THE SAME POINT 
OF VIEW, THERE WOULD BE 
NO SOCIAL PROBLEMS, AND 
CONSEQUENTLY N O PROG- 
RESS. THE WISER WE ARE, 
THE MORE WE MAY ADD BOTH 
TO OUR KNOWLEDGE AND TO 
OUR VALUE FOR OUR FELLOW 
MEN BY LOOKING OFTEN 
AT LIFE THROUGH THE 
EYES OF OUR OPPOSITES. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



THE PROBLEM CHAPTER I 

"The main thread of the story is the evolution of an 
ascending scale of wants in people's minds." 

THE MEDIATOR . CHAPTER II 

"Action, and happiness in action, and richer life for every- 
body as the result of action, were the literal terms of his 
theology/' 

THE CRISIS CHAPTER III 

"It would surrender the fundamental principle that every 
business must be run by its owners, not by outsiders." 

THE MISFITS CHAPTER IV 

"Mrs. Kissinger subscribed in a passive way to the formal 
creed that it is everybody's duty to be useful; but she knew 
of no way in which her own daughter could be useful with- 
out losing caste." 

THE PROPHET CHAPTER V 

"It followed that if more churches could shed their re- 
ligious trappings and adopt an essentially religious policy 
toward the needs of everyday people, they would presently 
be alive with the very masses that now stand aloof." 

THE PHILANTHROPIST CHAPTER VI 

"No one remarked that prevention before the accident, 
or quick action afterwards, would have been worth more 
than the cure likely to be effected at this late day." 

THE SAFE AND SANE . CHAPTER VII 

"The real issue is this: — How do you know that your 
better judgment hasn't usurped more authority than it is 
entitled to as a dictator to men of poorer judgment?" 

THE INSURGENT CHAPTER VIII 

"The ground plan of a democracy is that all shares in the 
profits of the cooperation shall be paid for in work, and 
that no one shall have any rights that he does not earn." 

THE UNCONVINCED CHAPTER IX 

"But what's the use? The only difference between me 
and the rest of the Company is that they don't believe a 
word of these things, while I subscribe to them in the 
abstract but don't believe they are available." 



THE MORALIST CHAPTER X 

"The key to the social struggle in its present stage is the 
question: — Shall the social aim be to use men for the sake 
of capital, or to use capital for the sake of men?" 

THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY CHAPTER XI 

"Everything that the gentleman said about capital would 
have been equally true in itself and equally irrelevant to the 
question at issue, if it had been alleged of the atmosphere 
and the sunlight instead of capital." 

THE DOOR OF HOPE CHAPTER XII 

"Whether the world is getting closer together or pulling 
wider apart, depends upon the number of us that can shake 
ourselves free from handicaps, so that we can count for all 
we are worth in the common interest." 

THE RENEGADE CHAPTER XIII 

"All the men whose brains are not thicker than their 
necks will come to it sooner or later. Some of them still 
get their fun going West to kill bear, but as a pure sporting 
proposition coming East to rescue the unconscious rich 
from themselves has a sure shade." 

THE SENTIMENTALIST CHAPTER XIV 

"While one of the chief counts in his theoretical indict- 
ment of the system was that it was mechanical throughout, 
from power house to President's office, with no room for 
human sensibilities, yet after his feelings had been moulded 
into a certain form for a generation, he could not rid himself 
of the hauntings of a thoroughly inconsistent loyalty to the 
Company." 

THE TRANSFORMATION CHAPTER XV 

"As a matter of fact, the world never possessed an abso- 
lutely infallible automatic consumer of human rights until 
it invented capitalism." 

THE NOVICE CHAPTER XVI 

"These two weeks burst the shell of Hester's intuition 
that, for her class, relief of distress was less goodness than 
polite evasion of the issue." 

THE PRICE OF PROGRESS CHAPTER XVII 

"We should have no saving of life by means of the ope- 
rating room if some one hadn't the nerve to cause suffering 
for the sake of relieving it." 



THE SOCIOLOGIST CHAPTER XVIII 

"The upshot was that all the folks who stopped to talk 
the matter over between innings agreed that live-and-help- 
live ought to be the game, and that every body would get 
more out of it in the end, after it was fairly learned, than 
they were getting out of the live-and-let-live game." 

THE WAR COLLEGE CHAPTER XIX 

"It ought to be easy for old college men to take up a 
mooted question in the same spirit they used to show 

when they got a good grip on a subject for debate 

If there was something to be said after all for the moon's 
being made of green cheese, it never entered their heads 
to block discussion by pleading vested rights." 

THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM .... CHAPTER XX 

"The only producers of wealth are nature and labor .... 
.... nature and labor always supply the power, while cap- 
ital is merely the grist and the millstone." 

THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION . . . CHAPTER XXI 

"A theory of economic distribution which assigns an in- 
come to landlord or capitalist for any other reason than that 
which assigns a wage to the manual laborer .... is not 
merely a rape of justice but an insult to ordinary intelli- 
gence." 

THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY . . CHAPTER XXII 

"Everything fair and reasonable in property would be 
affirmed and strengthened if it were readjusted on the 
service basis." 

THE DOVE OF PEACE CHAPTER XXIII 

"Each in his way was suffering for peace. Neither could 
quite believe that the apparently unattainable was within 
such easy grasp. Each feared to trust his own senses that 
he was not being played upon by some spiteful illusion." 

THE DEGENERATE CHAPTER XXIV 

"The one credit to the orgy was a currish sense of ac- 
countability." 

THE BROADER DEMOCRACY .... CHAPTER XXV 

"My first principle is that it is the chief duty of the Com- 
pany to adopt the policy which will do most towards en- 
abling each one of its workers to make the most of his life." 

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH .... CHAPTER XXVI 
"We will make it a part of. the business to find out how 
many instead of how few of its workers may have a property 
interest and a shareholder's voice in it." 



THE PROBLEM 



THE PROBLEM 



THE PROBLEM 

"The main thread of the story is the evolution of an 
ascending scale of wants in people's minds." 



u A ND bring them while I'm making out the order. Nicht 

/\ wahr, old boy, first drown the taste of that show?" 

" 'Twas the limit in Paris last Winter, but set to blunt Eng- 
lish it's vile." 

"By way of rebate, though, I checked up a surprising volt- 
age of Prexy Patton's 'moral indignation' ! Case of survival 
probably. Didn't know I still had that sort of talent !" 

"If the gentle juice of corn fruit won't restore our normal 
tone, there may be some virtue in the circumambient para- 
phernalia and deportment. If you want me to profit by your 
improving conversation, however, you'll have to keep their 
various toploftinesses busy at a distance." 

"Things are rather correct here?" 

"They give the plain Chicago voter a sinking feeling that 
his supply of used-to-it-all-my-life behavior may fail him at a 
critical juncture. I don't suppose every college graduate in 
New York is a member?" 

"Some of them have invested the equivalent in Yonkers 
house lots. Others are trying to work their credit up toward 
the figure, and meanwhile are serving their time in the army 
of discontent that fires blank ammunition at both clubs and 
property." 

"Do you blame them?" 

"I should blame any man a heap more that had the price 
and didn't get all there was in it." 

"Every time I come to New York lately," diverged Lyon, 
"it seems to me more of a municipal panel house. You've got 
the scavengers and scavengings brushed out of sight, and the 
people in the show rooms put up a sober bluff of believing 
there's no such thing as rot and riot behind the screen." 

"Are we different from Chicago?" cavilled Barclay. 

"We have our share of the same old original sin, but you've 
done a lot more to develop your holdings." 

15 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROBLEM 



"I thought Chicago owned up to being the wickedest town 
on earth?" 

"Chicago doesn't own up to being the superlative any- 
thing. In the early days, when the men that made the place 
were too busy to be vicious, and too humdrum to make good 
copy, the newspaper boys worked their imaginations over- 
time turning out local stories. These pipes gave Chicago its 
reputation, and the rest of the country prefers fiction to fact. 
I'm no census sharp, but I'll confide to you my guess that 
fifteen feet of New York frontage cover more curdled milk 
of human kindness than the average Chicago block. We may 
be wicked, but so far as execution goes we lack form to keep 
with you into the semi-finals. We are fairly equipped with 
the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of 
life; but for team work between them we are not in your 
class." 

A scrap over the comparative merits of New York and 
Chicago was the regular warming-up practice whenever Bar- 
clay and Lyon had any time to themselves. Without it they 
would hardly have known how to resume their earlier chum- 
miness. This time the wind veered till the standard of taste 
in the two towns was the storm centre. Lyon at last took to 
cover with the concession: "Yes, on the lower levels you 
distance us. We may be gluttons, for instance, but no one 
has called us epicures. If we could serve under-study terra- 
pin like this, there would be less of the Chicago peril in Man- 
hattan society. Stop me if it is Use majeste, but my frontier 
taste demands a dash more sherry " 

"Honestly, can you get a decent meal in Chicago?" inter- 
rupted Barclay. 

"If you are invited by the right people ; not if you have to 
forage for yourself. For purposes of brute nutrition we're as 
well off as the rest of the world. If one craves the sort of 
feeding that insinuates flattering unction of combining all 
the virtues of philosopher, artist, patriot and saint — well, 
apropos! Chicago is not yet up to that method of adminis- 
tering the consolations of religion." 

"Never mind Chicago any more in general." prompted 
Barclay. "You and Bob are the only worth-while particu- 
lars. Post me about him to date. You know his father never 
mentions his name in the office, and our orbits seldom cross 

16 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROBLEM 



outside. Mr. Halleck and I work together all right, but the 
suspicion won't down that I get on his nerves. I'm in the 
place he intended for Bob. He used to imagine a firm of 
Halleck and Halleck at the head of the New York bar. It 
will violate no confidence to remark in passing that one or 
two jealous rivals might possibly contest this rank with Hal- 
leck, Siemens and Barclay. The senior was to furnish the 
legal lore and Bob the fireworks. Mr. Halleck was never a 
good mixer, but he hoped his son would have a taste for pop- 
ularity. The old man has the temper for a Tammany Boss, 
if he could get in all his work behind a figure head. You 
remember when Bob was a Freshman he could keep up his 
end of a wrangle with any upper classman, whether he knew 
anything about the subject or not. From the time Bob began 
to talk, his father's chief amusement was to tease him into 
argument and teach him all the logical leads and counters 
and side steps. He wasn't stuffed with books, but his father 
did everything he knew to make him shifty. If he had turned 
out a composite of Evarts and Choate and Root, with strains 
of Metternich and Disraeli and Bismarck, Mr. Halleck would 
have been merely satisfied, not surprised ; and he would have 
credited honors about equally between blood and training. If 
Bob had gone into business and broken the code, his father 
would have shot himself like a gentleman. If the boy had 
run off with another man's wife, the stern parent in the case 
wouldn't have had to make a pretense of being mad all 
through; and when he fed the proper phrases to the report- 
ers he would have been sincere enough; but he would have 
consoled himself in private with the offset that the rascal at 
least had nerve. But to turn out a parson! The governor 
has been groggy ever since. Vice might have the saving ele- 
ment of virility, but that a son of his, with the chances he 
had, should turn his back on man's work and take to preach- 
ing and praying, is a freak of nature without a redeeming 
feature that his philosophy can discover. It strikes him as a 
poltroonery, an unsexing of himself, something unclean and 

obscene, not to be excused nor even decently named. 

But I've slid into quite an opening for the prosecution ! You'd 
know I was the talking partner. The case has been making 
itself up in my mind though, these dozen years, and if my 
chief should give the word I could try it for him with a good 

]7 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROBLEM 



deal of his own spirit. In his place I should feel about the 
same way." 

Lyon was evidently taken by surprise. He began rather 
uncertainly : — 

"I haven't exactly specialized on the clergy, but in this 
particular case the defense needn't go by default. The rec- 
ord might very well start with those little affairs in which 
Bob used to give Yale something to think about. To the best 
of my recollection, when he was ripping holes in the Elis they 
didn't act as though they thought the word 'virile' would 
overstate him. He's bucking a different line now, but it's a 
harder game. The toughs never had a stronger grip on our 
City Hall than they had a year and a half ago. Bob Halleck 
started a new Law and Order League. It turned out that he 
had to do the work while the rest hypothecated their moral 
support. He has had to fight everything, from averted 
glances to infernal machines, but the ordinances have never 
been so honestly enforced as in the past twelve months. If he 
should quit, the lid would be off in a week. He has paralyzed 
most of the church and temperance people by opening a re- 
sort in one of the labor districts, and running it seven days 
in the week in the interest of the men themselves. He didn't 
merely pronounce a benediction over a saloon and hand it 
back to the devil. He stays with it and steers it in the interest 
of good order. He says the way to tame the saloon is to tame 
it, and make it serve as a means, just as the right sort of club 
does for its members. He doesn't think one such experiment 
can cut any figure in competition with the bar business ; but 
he is trying to show, in a sample instance, how the saloon 
evil might be turned into a relative good, with the right sort 
of management. He cuts out the idea of profits, and turns 
the whole net receipts into increasing the attractions of the 
place. He is making progress toward a system of member- 
ships and petty dues that will carry the expenses without prof- 
its from the bar. Among other things, the men can cash their 
pay checks at the place, with no pressure to spend a cent. 
Bob doesn't expect to throw out liquor entirely, any more 
than he would tobacco; but nobody is bound to drink or 
smoke unless he wants to, and there is plenty of chance to 
have a good time doing something else. All the vicious ele- 
ments in the town are fighting him on the crime, and the 
vicious and virtuous together are fighting him harder on the 

18 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROBLEM 



saloon. Whether his father would agree with his theories 
or not, it doesn't seem worth while to doubt Bob's nerve." 

"But if he wanted to tackle that sort of thing," growled 
Barclay, "he could have done it better as a lawyer." 

"Come now, dear boy," Lyon whispered, with a restrain- 
ing pianissimo gesture, "we're not befuddling a jury. Our 
business is to get the law interpreted in the interest of our 
clients ; and it isn't once in a thousand times that our client 
is the public. Bob knew what he wanted, and he chose his 
profession with his eyes open. He was as wise as you and I 
that if a lawyer puts in any time on social reforms people 
in the know either call it an advertising plunge or wonder 
what interest pays his fees. A minister may do things that 
get him rated as a fool, but that's supposed to be his job, and 
there's a presumption of sincerity in his favor." 

"Suppose he is sincere?" fretted Barclay, "a minister's bus- 
iness sense isn't expected to go beyond touching the railroads 
for cut rates, and collecting easy money for wedding fees. 
He never gets a hearing with practical men when anything 
serious is up." 

"That depends on the minister," Lyon calmly contra- 
dicted. "Before we are very far into the fight that's brew- 
ing in Chicago, the whole town will be calling on Bob Halleck 
and one or two other ministers of his stripe, with two or 
three women, to get things out of the hole your 'practical' 
men have dug. Professionally I can keep my countenance 
and reel off all the old stuff about the superior sagacity of bus- 
iness men ; but personalty, if I was gunning for owls I'd ask 
no better hunting ground than a directors' meeting." 

"Then you pick Bob for a hawk?" cynically interpreted 
Barclay. 

"For the kind of politics we're up against, yes, and the old 
style business man is as blind as a tenderloin policeman. I 
know lots of them that call it practical to make the wall as 
high and as thick as they can between themselves and their 
help, and to order a wage-cut, or a raise of prices simply be- 
cause they have the power. They can't see beyond the bet- 
ter looking balance sheet tonight to the bad day-after-tomor- 
row. Bob Halleck wouldn't get chesty over that sort of 
monkeying with human nature." 

"Human nature!" grimaced Barclay. "Yes, Bob took the 
thirty-third degree in that order when he married !" 

19 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROBLEM 



"The toast to the Queen might as well come in at this 
point/' suavely proposed Lyon. "Woman! God bless her! 
We believe in her forever, in spite of all the women !" 

They exchanged worldly-wise looks over the rims of their 
glasses, and Barclay vouchsafed the sage reflection : — 

"The sentiment does you credit, my young friend, but it 
doesn't let Bob out." 

"What do you know about his domestic affairs?" demanded 
Lyon with a touch of anxiety. 

"I know enough for a salute of 'I-told-you-so's' if poetic 
justice ever comes to her own. From the time we squawked 
at one another out of our perambulators, Dora Doyle made 
trouble for Bob and me, until we went to prep school. We 
didn't set her to words, but if we had known how to phrase 
our state of mind we should have put her down simply as a 
necessary evil. Bidgewood was a handful of cottages then, 
and we three were the only children I remember. We seemed 
to be fixed in the order of things, and had to make the best 
of it. Dora was the sort of cross between turtle-dove and 
tiger-cat that lives to kill joy and monopolize privilege. Ten 
minutes of her pathetic racket would make us feel so mean 
she could bully us the rest of the day. We didn't see much 
of her for the next dozen years, but when Bob came back 
from Germany, and was waiting for a call, Dora was just 
settling her father's estate and managing her mother. There 
was little left but debts and the incompatible likenesses of 
the two women. Dora knew that Bob's mother had left him 
rich, but if she hadn't he was a man. His place in nature was 
to furnish a kingdom for feminine tyranny. The pathetic 
was mobilized and — I'm giving you my theory of course 
— before Bob could run up the not-in-control signal their 
names were on a marriage license. I felt a lot more like a 
pall-bearer when I had to pose as best man at that wedding. 
I should be a cad to talk like this to anybody else, but I'll 
be damned if I believe we're doing right by Bob not to call 
things by their right names. It's a tragedy, or I'm no mind 
reader. Nine years with Dora Doyle and Bob Halleck is 
either a clam or a slumbering volcano. I've never come to 
the point before, but I've always wondered when you'd begin 
to fill out the plot." 

20 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROBLEM 



"If you knew Chicago, 'twouldn't seem very strange/' 
oriented Lyon, with uneasiness about passing from externals 
to the human factors. "Unless men are in the same line, 
living on the north and south sides might as well be New 
York and Boston. When one has business in the centre, and 
the other hasn't, they meet only by appointment. Bob be- 
longs to one of the down town clubs that I do, but he seldom 
comes there. My father is treasurer of his church, and I'm 
down for my part at the finance end of everything Bob says 
is all right, but that's about as near as we get to each other. 
We have a 'phone talk every few days. I have probably not 
been in his house more than three or four times, and his wife 
was not always there. As a bachelor I'm not very well 
placed to entertain a minister and his wife; and to tell the 
truth she has handed the ice rather freely whenever I have 
made the attempt. That didn't strike me as particularly to 
her discredit. If she was not for me, she was clearly within 
her rights ; and anyway I was too busy to chew the rag. But 
it's like having money in the bank to know Bob is within 
reach. Come to think of it, I'm afraid I've been letting him 
accumulate too long without drawing the interest." 

"If I lived within as easy observing distance as you do," 
prognosticated Barclay, "I should take time enough from 
commercial law to follow one first-class case in alienism. 
Tolstoi and Zola never had better material. A woman with 
the soul of a siphon, and the cunning to work her weakness 
the harder, the less she ought to win ; this woman with a life- 
lien on a man that's sheer strength and conscience — there's 
a situation to turn the best man's program upside down. 
Talk about your social problems ! Here's a social problem all 
by itself. What can you say for a world that sacrifices such 
a man to a woman of her stamp ? In a moment of freak gen- 
erosity he promises to love and cherish her. If it had been 
a contract to deliver a load of coal, it could be vacated in the 
nearest court, on the ground that no equivalent could be 
rendered; but men are cheaper than coal. The most she 
ever did or can deserve of him is long distance charity, with- 
out further benefit of femininity. We rule that her claim to 
control and occupy is good, no matter if it licenses the worst 
in her and handicaps the best in him." 

"I'm not quite on to your curves yet, Ray; — and Lyon's 
uncertainty was genuine. "What are you getting at, reform 

21 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROBLEM 



of the marriage institution in general, or a rescue expedition 
for Bob in particular?" 

"Suppose we compromise and call it weather prediction. 
Here's an impossible situation. A woman who loves herself 
only, and with a cankery little love that is jealous even of an 
idea, if it refers away from herself. She's billetted on a man 
who wants to spend his life making the world better. Not a 
solitary thing can he undertake, from having a home with 
that spirit in it to winning business and politics over to his 
view, that isn't harder simply because she's his wife. Some- 
thing's got to give way. Which is stronger, he or the sit- 
uation?" 

"Taking your estimate of ministers in general, along with 
your theory of Bob's matrimonial flunk in particular, it looks 
like an easy guess." 

"That's all right, but I wasn't on oath in those sections of 
my deposition. Besides, if a good man couldn't make an ass 
of himself once in a lifetime without loss of rating, any one 
left outside the fool class would argue a broken down detec- 
tive system. Bob is bound to realize his situation sooner or 
later. He's got to choose between carrying out his ideal and 
settling down as a caterer to his wife's perversities. If it was 
only a case of his whims against hers, it would be the old 
story of our play days. She'd win every time. But when 
it comes to a straight show-down between one shallow head 
and empty heart and the whole range of ideals that Bob be- 
lieves in to improve the world, it's another proposition. What 
right has he to let her hold him back from making the most 
of himself? So long as it's merely a matter of carrying 
through a bad job, at the cost of his own comfort and happi- 
ness, why he'll be the same old dead game sport to the end ; 
but if he once decides that he's being worked for a breach of 
trust, if he faces the immorality of squandering a leader of 
many men on demand of one hopelessly petty woman, if he 
sees himself as a pitiable type of defaulter, if he realizes that 
he is surrendering a mission to a superstition, the social pro- 
prieties will be due for a shake-up that will make his saloon 
and slum ventures look prudish." 

"You wouldn't survive the disappointment if the catas- 
trophe failed to connect?" 

"Most likely not. You see, Dora was practically the only 
girl I ever knew. One of the reasons why I shall probably 

22 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROBLEM 



never marry, is that she is a fixed idea in my mind as a clue 
to every woman I meet. At any rate, if the boy is father to 
the man, it's a good gamble that Dora Doyle was mother to 
the woman that's Bob Halleck's wife." 

"There's such a thing as change of character?" 

"Yes, and then there isn't. Kingfishers don't grow up 
homing pigeons." 

"But after all," ruled Lyon, "your case has no standing in 
court. You have produced no corpus delicti. Bob shows no 
signs of distress. He is making good all along the line. So 
far as the evidence goes, if there were Dora Doyles enough to 
go 'round they might make men of all the ministers." 

"I'll admit the case isn't ready for trial, but I've freed my 
mind, and gone on record. Cause and effect may be off duty 
for a while, but if they are still earning wages you'll some- 
time remember what I've said." 

"It may all mean something," Lyon admitted hypothetic- 
ally, "but it doesn't appeal to me. My habits have given 
me the feeling that business and politics furnish the only 
actual troubles. To help us forget them, family scandals are 
invented, to be looked at over the footlights. They are no 
more real to my mind than Niobe's tears." 

"Such simplicity I have not found, no not in Flatbush! 
You've got it precisely reversed. The serious things in life 
are not business and politics. These trifles are only the 
games we play to offset the private woes. Personal relations 
are our heaven and hell. We've contrived an intermediate 
state, but it's a doubtful success. The essence of life is the 
give and take of sympathy between man and man." 

"That sounds like the real thing," endorsed Lyon, "but it's 
just the reason why it seems to me all a fiction that people 
who belong together can go back on one another. In busi- 
ness or politics, where men are mere counters, I'm prepared 
for it. I have never come in contact with treachery in real 
life between members of the same family. I can think of it 
only as part of the make-up of imitation people." 

"Then Chicago parents ought to send their daughters to 
law offices instead of finishing schools." 

"With judicious selection of the offices the daughters would 
be first-class risks. But on the material point, I can't imagine 
Bob Halleck's wife, whoever she were, clogging him in such a 
way that he would count her an enemy. However selfish or 



23 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROBLEM 



stupid she might have been at the start, he would be liberal 
and sane enough to pull her out of herself and gear her to his 
interests." 

"Then you think the trees have sap enough to supply the 
surroundings with climate?" 

"Well, I've always had the feeling that one fairly poised 
mind ought to have common sense enough for two." 

"Before this night's memories get dimmed," blustered 
Barclay, "I swear I'll write a Willie in Wonderland. It's 
just the other way. A level headed man can stand all sorts 
of passive stupidity, and he can make a patient stagger at 
carrying it on his back, but if it gets domineering it's like a 
toothache. One can't be oneself with it. It's fight to a finish, 
one way or the other." 

"To sum up evidence and argument," contested Lyon, "it's 
this, — You have a theory that the moon is inhabited; there- 
fore that sort of folks can have no use for one another. If 
that's the grade of reasoning you sell as well as give away, my 
first duty when I get home will be to recommend a change of 
eastern advisers." 

"My last act under the existing arrangements," notified 
Barclay, "will be to render my bill for dental surgery on be- 
lated wisdom teeth. 'Twas more of an operation than I bar- 
gained for. If I had suspected your innocence, I should have 
left it undisturbed. You might have gone back to your Chi- 
cago Eden without a doubt that it's all apple-blossoms and 
bowers of bliss with no trace of a serpent. But the mischief 
is afoot. Your mind has been poisoned. I suppose a suffi- 
ciently sophisticated suggestion might have served in place of 
a crime to inoculate the Marble Faun with a conscience. Any 
way, your eyes are open now. Bob is a problem play in real 
life. You can probably do nothing more than watch it for 
a while, but the time may come when you'll be drawn for a 
speaking part." 

"Meanwhile it would relieve the tension," Lyon finically 
observed, "to know whether I'm liable for oculists' or dentists' 
rates." 

"Slight overproduction of aliases and alibis, I'll allow," 
nodded Barclay, after checking up the connection, "but any- 
way all professions except ours charge what the traffic will 
bear." 

24 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROBLEM 



It was Lyon's turn to treat the subject confidentially. For 
a few moments the two men blew smoke rings in silence, and 
then in a half apologetic tone Lyon resumed the discussion : — 

"I might as well own up that since we left the law school 
I've divided my time between getting the office into my head 
in the morning and pitching it completely enough out to 
sleep at night. 'Till I had to quit last year and take an ocean 
trip, my interests were either pure business or any counter 
irritant that would help me forget shop. That meant that I 
took nothing seriously except my own work. To start with, 
it was a good sample of the method we call 'practical,' to put 
a boy fresh from his books where an old head was needed. I 
stood fire all right; but the strain told, and left me rather 
numb for anything else, even amusements. I've been think- 
ing lately that I've learned my lesson well enough to handle 
the professional end with a little lighter touch. What you 
have been saying falls in pretty well with a suspicion that 
began to creep in with that notion. I mistrust that business 
induces absent mindedness about the rest of the world. Since 
I've begun to take notice I feel like one of the babes in the 
wood. Except in corporation affairs I can't place things as 
well as I could ten years ago. Of course, we unlearn in that 
time a lot of things that are not so ; but beyond that, people 
outside of my line seem to have got away from me. They're 
a little hazy and mythical. I have a sneaking feeling that 
either they are not real or I'm not. I make it out to be a de- 
mand for a change of ratio between business and life." 

"Gives a fellow a sort of eaves-dropping-at-a-confessional 
feeling," undertoned Barclay, "to hear you go off in this 
fashion. When you swing over on such a tack I'm not skip- 
per enough to follow. You might call it an air-ship chauffeur 
stunt. I'm not up to the part. I'm with you though that you 
can afford to look about a bit and watch other people." 

Then after another silence, Barclay broke into a sort of 
apostrophe: — "Things are doing in the world that nobody 
understands. Whether they will go better when we do un- 
derstand is another story; but people who like to see the 
wheels go 'round are missing the time of their lives in not 
prying more beyond their own circuit. I've always had a 
notion that the old chaps who tried to get a theory to explain 
life were picking up threads that would some day lead to 
something. None of them have arrived, so far as I know, but 

2 5 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROBLEM 



why shouldn't they? What is it all about? After a few 
billion more of us have served our term and made our record, 
there ought to be material for working conclusions. As far 
as I can see, fight and love are the two great commandments 
with promise. Life is automatic adjustment of their propor- 
tions. It takes a lot of fight along a lot of lines to get the 
conditions for a little love. Up to date, the problem for every- 
body is not whether to fight, but how. If you won't hold me 
up for what I said a minute ago, I'll let you in on my theory 
that fighting is the business of life. It's the biggest part of 
what we're all doing. We keep up a pious pother to disguise 
it, but the fight's the thing, wherever there's any going 
ahead. When we are wise enough to be genuine we shall 
stop trying to conceal it. After we've fought it out, love may 
have its chance. Love is the end, not the means. If any one 
can swipe a little of it as he goes along, he's that much ahead 
of the game ; but the reason why we've made such a mess of 
life is that people have too soon got sick or ashamed of fight- 
ing. They have made a virtue of loving while it's only a 
luxury. That's the philosophy underneath my interest in 
Bob's case. He ought to be fighting that woman, not trying 
to love her." 

Lyon was less able than usual to make out how much Bar- 
clay meant of what he said. With much the same uncer- 
tainty about himself he answered : — 

"I've heard the theory that food and sex are the two forces 
that keep the world moving, and perhaps your 'fight and 
love' amounts to the same thing. It sounds like that crazy 
German Nietzsche, with his 'superman.' The philosophers 
may sometime get a clue that will place these things, but they 
all seem to be guessing at present. Edgerly, who married my 
sister you know, is professor of ethics in our University. His 
hobby is that the world so far has been a go-as-you-please 
race, and that the next step is to turn it into a scientific pro- 
gram. We've got to make up our minds what it's worth while 
to aim at, and then resolve ourselves into a cooperative world's 
bureau of social invention. His prescription is 'Take account 
of cause and effect in the whole range of life, select your scale 
of purposes, and adopt ways and means accordingly.' Your 
'fight it out and love if you get a chance' has the call on the 
score of feasibility. It's a religion most of us could fairly 
well live down to ; but I wouldn't name it as a winner in the 

26 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROBLEM 



long run. A fight is like stopping a fire by blowing up build- 
ings. It's a confession that we've lost our grip, and it's recov- 
ery by means as destructive as the original evil. There's some- 
thing wrong when we can't find any way out but a fight. 
This tussle we're up against in Chicago has got to be fought 
out of course. It's a simple case of must. I expect to fight 
as though I'd rather do it than eat. At the same time, the 
closer we come to it the more I'm haunted by the feeling that 
the whole business is a hell broth. As to the specific issues 
that are bringing the crash, we are absolutely right, and our 
position against the unions is strictly legal. I would rather 
fight till I'm beaten and forced into submission to superior 
strength, than yield another hair. All the same, I don't be- 
lieve there should be any fight. We've got a false start so 
long as anybody has to be forced to surrender. All in all, 
things as we find them are a very respectable argument for 
resurrecting the devil hypothesis." 

"When we get on a little further in penology," Barclay 
prophesied disgustedly, "there'll be a Class A in the bribe 
takers' penitentiary for your brand of trusties. Your price 
is a pious phrase. You pretend you don't believe in fighting, 
but you fight. I confess I do believe in fighting, because I 
fight. I size up the world by the same measure. What we do 
is what we believe, and we won't begin to do business on a 
cash basis till what we believe matches what we pretend. We 
have to fight for what we get in this world. Ergo, Have at ! 
Give and take ! Fight 'till the greater and less of forces have 
settled themselves. Then you have your world to stay. It's 
simply gravitation in all dimensions, with the disturbing 
factors of hysterics and hypocrisy thrown out." 

"Edgerly would say you haven't sufficiently generalized 
your induction," objected Lyon. "It's his academic way of 
welshing when he hasn't an answer handy. I can't stop you, 
but I think you're off. You are simply blurting out what we 
are all doing; at least what we're doing first and foremost. 
You jump farther than I can to the conclusion that this tells 
the whole story. I can't submit a theory in rebuttal. I 
haven't thought beyond my sentimental challenge of appear- 
ances. I have a feeling though that our whole social system 
is assailable at the same point where I spot the weakness of 
your theory. The world is not made up of things but of 
people. Things gravitate, people climb. Things have a force 

27 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROBLEM 



of their own, but they get their values from people. Things 
are at most the housing. People are the life inside. I've 
never thought it out in this shape before, but to match your 
theory I'll spring the claim that the main thread of the story 
is the evolution of an ascending scale of wants in people's 
minds. Life is a game of living chess working out a more 
complicated scheme than any player could have had in 
advance." 

"Repeat Edgerly again," gasped Barclay, "while I think!" 

"No, don't think. Let's move for a stay of proceedings 

till next time. You New Yorkers mistake sunrise for the 

edge of the evening previous. I'm down for a heavy day's 

work before my train leaves tomorrow." 

"Well, light one more any way, to help us back to earth." 

Barclay and Lyon were fair specimens of that frank type of 
pagan upon which the destinies of modern Christianity de- 
pend. Their breeding might have been a theorem in eugen- 
ics. They had learned the traditional world in schools that 
still seemed to them the best of their kind. By grace of fam- 
ily connections they had learned the business world, through 
rapid promotion to responsibility that initiated them into 
commercial relations on a large scale. They had learned 
themselves, they had formed their own individuality, they 
had settled upon the valuations that decided their personal 
conduct, without conscious prejudice or embarrassment from 
any system or standard or code. They would have resented 
any imputation that they had not become themselves with 
perfect freedom from outside influence. The truth was 
that social moulds had merely eased pressure on them at the 
point where their world was tolerant of variation. They were 
accordingly of the time and of the social stratum that pro- 
duced them, with the faintest marks of sub-classification. If 
hard pushed, they would have harked back to conventional 
beliefs amounting to a moral creed, and a wholesome one. 
Life to them meant doing, however, not defining. Their pro- 
fessional experience had come at them like troops of raiders. 
It had been a succession of challenges to repel attacks, to plan 
counter-attacks, to seize strategic positions, to follow up ad- 
vantages. Their occupation had prescribed a rigid habit of 
mind. It had become second nature to choose distinct aims 
to be reached, and to rate everything at what it was worth 

28 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROBLEM 



as means to those ends. All their thinking and feeling was 
in terms of some concrete value-unit, avowed or implied. If 
anything was worth while, it was because it had a use in get- 
ting some result that they wanted. If they ever listened to 
talk of ideal values, it was in moments of relaxation that 
didn't count. They supposed themselves superior to illusions. 
In fact, their mental background was chiefly illusion, while 
their experience had explored a little segment of reality. 
They did not knowingly think by rule. They believed that 
the successful shall inherit the earth. If called upon to state 
their idea of success, more power in the market would be the 
chief item in the schedule. Yet they would insist on a blank 
reservation. If pushed farther they would say that success 
is control of the market, plus. Each of them had his moments 
of irritation because he could not put a clear meaning into 
that plus. Each of them occasionally wondered whether fail- 
ure to run down that plus might not turn out to be leaving 
some vital point in his scheme of life unprotected. Yet 
these misgivings were wholly off-duty episodes. Expansion of 
trade and firmer grip on the conditions of production, were 
the chief landmarks within their horizon of strenuous action. 
All other good things seemed to them so absolutely depend- 
ent upon business that it cost no moral struggle to concen- 
trate on commercial success. Although there was no rec- 
ognized conflict, still the ghost of the plus might put in an 
appearance at any moment, either as jester or spectre, to cast 
suspicion on the completeness of the policy. The apparition 
had never been detained for examination. It was a fugitive 
conceit, passing with other fancies. 

Certain anemic sorts of their contemporaries flattered their 
own self-esteem by labeling such as Barclay and Lyon "mate- 
rialists." Their mean aims and sordid purposes were sup- 
posed by those same critics to mark the low estate of society. 
If the two men should plead to the indictment their answer 
would be: — "Our kind are the only respectable idealists. 
What's the use of dreaming about the impossible, or deify- 
ing the unattainable? It's a man's work to find the doable 
and do it." 



29 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MEDIATOR 



THE MEDIATOR 



II 

THE MEDIATOR 

"Action, and happiness in action, and richer life for every- 
body as the result of action, were the literal terms of his 
theology. ,, 

IN the four or five days just past Robert Halleck had been 
like the bearer of a flag of truce between two armies ready 
for battle. Old residents regarded the outlook as more threat- 
ening than at any time since the Haymarket affair. The 
form which the impending conflict had assumed during the 
last twenty-four hours had taken Halleck completely by sur- 
prise. He had for some time believed that a stronger labor 
combination was organizing than capital in this country had 
ever encountered. He was nevertheless entirely unprepared 
for the latest phases of its plan of campaign. All his attempts 
at conciliation had been wasted on details which now ap- 
peared to have been immaterial. He had not supposed it pos- 
sible to unite organized labor in the United States in support 
of a position that would raise a radical question with capi- 
talism. Labor conflicts had always before seemed to him 
mere trials of strength over division of spoils. They did little 
if anything either to promote the spirit of justice or to make 
its letter more clear. They merely measured the relative 
fighting force of opposing claimants. The conflict now at 
hand would mark a new departure and possibly open an 
epoch. 

Both camps rated Halleck as their friend. He had vol- 
unteered as an informal mediator, and each had accepted 
his good offices. Both sides confided to him their views of 
the claims in dispute, but neither went so far as to tell him 
much more of its plans than was given to the public. In- 
stead of showing results, the last few hours had revealed to 
him that his efforts had simply helped his friends in the labor 
party to gain time for more effective preparation against his 
friends the capitalists. The quarrels over details had merely 
masked manoeuvers that were establishing bases for a fierce 
conflict of principle. Halleck was convinced of three points : 
first, the cause of the unions was just ; second, the strike was 
wrong ; third, peace was impossible. 

33 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MEDIATOR 



The faces of the two thousand people to whom he must 
speak the next morning began to shape themselves in Hal- 
leck's imagination. They all knew the signs of the coming 
storm. Whenever he preached they expected him to speak for 
the day and the hour. They knew it was not like him to 
put them off with ancient history, or with abstract theology, 
or with moral generalities, when they were interested in get- 
ting at the heart of a practical question. 

Halleck was aware that this reputation was both his strength 
and his weakness. It made his opportunity and increased 
his difficulty. He never allowed himself to forget that he 
was trying to hold the attention of a type of people between 
those who ignore a preacher's appeals altogether, and those 
who want from him a "thus saith the Lord." Even the 
hearers who had been attracted by his method were enough 
like the average to want a dictum that would settle the right 
and wrong in specific cases, and show how the settlement 
might be enforced. They were not beyond suspecting sharp 
practice if they were told that there was truth and error on 
both sides. They were in danger of thinking it an evasion 
of the issue to trace the case in question back to fundamentals. 
They shared the common impulse to flout religion as a moral 
guide unless it offers instant relief of acute conditions. 

Halleck was no writer of ethical essays. He did not be- 
lieve in the pedagogue in the pulpit. If there had been times 
when the clergyman was the only person in the parish who 
was educated and could educate, those times were no longer 
in an American city. When he preached, he took for granted 
all the agencies for popular instruction. He assumed that 
his part was not to teach but to persuade and lead. He was 
a hard student, along lines which he believed to be closest to 
human needs; but he studied by system, not to furnish his 
next discourse. His sermons never smelled of books. His 
ideal was to know life so well that he could interpret it to his 
neighbors in a way to convince them of the direction their 
conduct ought to take. He did not put himself in special 
training for each next encounter with his congregation. He 
kept to his program of study, and thinking, and mixing with 
real people. Saturday evening and Sunday morning were 
reserved for suiting a message to the occasion. He mentally 
interviewed the persons likely to make up his audience, and 
the groups which some of them would represent. He asked 

34 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MEDIATOR 



himself "What is the glimpse into life that will most help 
these people at this moment?" The answer always came from 
the problem which he had found some of them tackling, or 
from some moral phase of an immediate public interest. 
Then he reflected whether the Bible contained any direct 
teaching on the subject. His mother's ideas had been formed 
before the Bible went out of fashion, and she had taught him 
to memorize at least a verse a day almost from the time he 
began to talk. At her death, when he was fourteen years old, 
he had most of the New Testament, the Psalms, and large 
sections of the prophetic books in a collection of indelible 
mental records. He was rarely embarrassed long in select- 
ing from these his biblical precedent. He used it not as a 
proof but as an illustration. 

A chess player might have said that he always used the 
same pulpit opening. It was after this style: — "The prin- 
ciple of life that I shall talk about this morning came to view 
in such and such an incident recorded in the Bible ; or it was 
stated in these words ; the surroundings of the passage show 
that the point was in brief this ; now things are not true be- 
cause they are in the Bible, they are in the Bible be- 
cause they are true; I ask you, therefore, to notice how this 
principle that was discovered so long ago applies in our own 
lives." 

As a rule Halleck had used his reference to the Bible and 
dismissed it in less than five minutes. He often said that one 
reason why the pulpit at present attracts so few people is 
stupid pulpit psychology. Most preachers treat the Bible 
like a collection of antiquities in which people must be bored 
into taking an interest. He believed he could best use the 
Bible as he would a stereopticon, to direct attention away from 
the instrument itself to the views that it projects. 

Robert Halleck had outgrown the first flush of his youth- 
ful enthusiasms, but what he had lost in ardor he had gained 
in decision. He made out the plot of human life to be steady 
progress from crude beginnings into conditions making for 
improvement beyond any known limit. In his version life 
was a winnowing process, in which the deposit is types of indi- 
viduals and types of dealings between individuals that on the 
whole form an ascending scale. He could not be dragged into 
discussing the scholastic question whether a better world could 
be imagined. He frankly confessed that he had no way to ex- 

35 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MEDIATOR 



plain some of the commonplaces of life so as to prove that the 
scheme which involves them is the best that might have been. 
He did not hesitate to say that he could not understand how 
some of the incidents of the common lot could occur, either 
with God's consent or without it. He neither doubted the ex- 
istence of God nor tried to conceal his feeling that God might 
have done some things better. Yet he did not rush into the 
paltry blunder of assuming that his mental failure settled 
any thing. He did not attempt to ignore the inexplicable. He 
recognized it without apology, but he steadied himself with 
the equally candid belief that if he knew more he would un- 
derstand more, and if he knew all he would understand all. 

Whatever might be conceivable in the way of a superior 
universe, Halleck was committed to work at his best in the 
world as it is. So far as he could see, human progress has to 
be paid for at a tremendous cost of pain and sorrow and 
waste. Good men die when their friends think they are 
most needed, and good efforts are defeated when the times 
seem just ripe for their success. The individuals have been 
rare in history who could clearly prove a margin on the profit 
side of their life account. Halleck conceded all this, yet it 
had no visible tendency to make him treat it as the final 
word. With all its discounts, life seemed to him a paying- 
investment. He did not worry about partition of the divi- 
dends. To him the final inducement to work was his belief 
that someone, sometime, would profit by the work. Whether 
a metaphysic could be invented to justify it or not, the method 
of life seemed to him quite plain. His summary of it was, not 
to let our circumstances master us, but to master them; 
whether an experience brings pleasure or pain, not to be con- 
trolled by it, but to control it. The practical application of 
his philosophy was that it is stupid to fret over the more we 
might do, or might enjoy, if our circumstances were differ- 
ent. Our problem is to organize precisely the experience 
which we meet into purpose and action of a better quality 
than surrender to our surroundings. We shall amount to 
the most in the end, for ourselves and for the scheme of 
things in which every man gets his meaning, if we stoutly 
refuse to be counted out, and keep on using such strength as 
we have, in the direction of the best good we can see. 

It was not interest in abstract speculation that led Halleck 
to his creed. For his own sake it would have been enough 

36 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MEDIATOR 



that he found work to do. The task would have been its 
own creed. As a minister, however, he had to hear the con- 
fidences of all sorts of people. He found his problems in 
their difficulties. He was not long in discovering that the 
traditional forms of faith were moulded to fit a mental atti- 
tude which he seldom met. The kind of first aid to the dis- 
tressed that he was most often called upon to render created a 
demand for a version of life which appealed to the every-day 
man's sense of reality. There must be some common prem- 
ises if there were to be common conclusions. 

Yet he seemed to reach his least common denominator of 
life by accident rather than calculation. He did not delib- 
erately set out to construct a theory. As he widened his ac- 
quaintance with plain people, and as he realized some of the 
differences between what they thought and what they were 
supposed to think, he became aware that a process of simpli- 
fication was going on in his own mind. Figures of speech 
were yielding up a literal meaning. Particulars that had 
ranked as fixed terms in the equation of truth became alge- 
braic symbols with varying value. Special formulas that he 
had held as fundamental merged into more general expres- 
sions of deeper meanings. His feelings quite failed to keep 
pace with his judgment. If he had been given to introspec- 
tion, he would long ago have discovered a break between the 
mental habits which he inherited from the past and the per- 
ceptions which he was deriving from the present. He had 
observed that his thoughts were fast giving up life as a ritual, 
and were accepting it as a coherent system of cause and effect. 
Yet he was taken by surprise when he found that he had 
stopped trying to make out a case for the moral order of the 
universe in terms of the pains and pleasures of individuals. 

In the first year of his pastorate Halleck was one day try- 
ing to use the idea of divine help to encourage a man whose 
affairs had all gone wrong. "No! No!" was the response, 
"don't tantalize me with that. Your errand-boy conception 
of the Almighty goes to smash against the facts." The young 
minister did not welcome the conclusion, nor accept it out of 
hand. It impeached all his theological training. He tried 
to avoid it, like a lost child afraid to look into the dark for its 
mother. He felt that it would rob both God and men of real 
personality. 

37 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MEDIATOR 



He was never guilty of fighting for a theory simply be- 
cause he had once held it; yet he refused to surrender on 
demand to what seemed to him a stone-crusher version of 
life. He had no stomach for reducing the spiritual factors 
to mechanical forces. The substantial issue in his mind was 
between order and no order as our final version of the moral 
world. He found himself repudiating a supposed principle of 
order under which the likes and dislikes of persons made 
each into a world by himself. He took refuge in an idea of 
individuality which pictured every person not as complete 
in himself, but as made up of all the interests which link him 
with the destinies of all other persons. 

Halleck's terms of peace with his own doubts left a soul in 
men and a sovereignty in God. They provided for what 
seemed to him a more real unity between God and men than 
his earlier notions had contained. The self that sets itself 
up as an end to itself chooses isolation in the moral world, 
and deserves it. The self that finds itself in falling into 
harmony with the larger scheme of things, cannot be isolated 
and cannot be disappointed. Its life becomes incidental, to 
be sure, rather than final. At the same time it becomes real 
rather than fanciful. The larger life comes to its own at 
the very moment when the lesser life meets defeat. "Let 
me die with my face toward the enemy' ' is the universal 
symbol of the successful life. Its measure is not its individual 
career, but the sweep of the movement to which it con- 
tributes. 

In Halleck's hands this philosophy was not mysticism. 
There were timid souls in his church who even suspected it 
of materialism. It lacked all the vague otherworldly tone 
by which they were most suggestible. It did not borrow 
enough of the stock phrases of religion to assure them that it 
was Christian. Its working precepts were: Serve the best 
good you can understand; Don't shirk your share; Do your 
part; Look for your compensations not in the enjoyments 
that end with yourself, but in the on-going of the greater 
good. Halleck appraised religion chiefly as a means of fit- 
ting people into the economy of life. As mere sentiment, he 
classed it frankly with the other aesthetic enjoyments. 
Action and happiness in action, and richer life for every- 
body as the result of action, were the literal terms of his 
theology. 

38 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MEDIATOR 



His scheme of action left little room for bewailing the 
evil in the world. It was altogether occupied with promoting 
the good. He did not flinch from his duty with the types of 
people who are tenacious of the luxury of sorrow, but he al- 
ways made a botch of his efforts with them. His discordant 
hopefulness disturbed their glorification of grief, and his per- 
sistent prescription of work as a panacea often affected 
them as verging upon insult. He believed there would be 
ample time for futile bemoanings if he should outlive strength 
to lend a hand. Until senility vetoed effort, he preferred to 
put his regrets for the evils of the world into the form of 
work to remove the conditions that produce the evils. If he 
should die before reaching the age of fruitless regrets, he felt 
quite content to stand on his record. 

The professional reformers looked askance at Halleck. 
They could understand neither his temper nor his philoso- 
phy. He notoriously neglected the inspiration of things out 
of joint. Rueful contemplation of social wrongs gave him 
no more joy than brooding over the sores he had seen in his 
clinic would afford to a healthy physician. Evils suggested 
to him not morbid reflection, but first thorough investigation 
of their source, and then radical treatment. The world's 
surplus of health and strength, physical and moral, over sick- 
ness and weakness of all sorts, impressed him more than the 
whole catalogue of casual ills. Gain, growth, healing, re- 
covery, seemed to him the cardinal traits of life. 

Halleck did not imagine that it ought to be as easy for the 
average man as for himself to believe that the world is sound 
at the core. He was all the time in touch with people who 
needed more nerve every day to keep their courage than his 
whole experience had required. He often wondered whether 
in their place he could be as brave. At all events, he was 
convinced of his mission to use his brighter outlook for the 
benefit of people whose position was less secure. 

Never had Halleck felt himself closer than this evening 
to the limits of his resources. He had no misgivings about 
the permanent course of events, but the present and his share 
in it were in the balance. He doubted his ability to affect 
the attitude of a single partisan, and still more his power to 
get fundamental factors recognized. He was not ambitious 
to project himself personally into the coming strife, but the 
conflict, as it had betrayed itself in the last few hours, was 

39 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MEDIATOR 



bound to put on trial not merely economics and politics but 
religion. When hostile human interests threaten war on a 
large scale, and make anarchy of social order, must religion 
be a mute or worse? Can it contribute anything that will 
count toward peace? Is religion a social force, or merely a 
fashion in stage costumes, or the movable scenery of the play ? 
Is religion the world's sanity, or simply a diversion of its mor- 
bid moods, to be dismissed when work must be done ? 

The one question under these different forms had not, at 
this late day, overtaken Halleck unawares. He had answered 
it for himself before he decided on his vocation. The answer 
had dictated his decision. It became his controlling pur- 
pose to do what he could to justify the answer, and to broaden 
the scope of its influence. 

But at this moment Chicago was in a condition that 
warned every wise man to guard his words as he would sparks 
in a magazine. Thousands of men were ready to fight over 
claims which admitted no compromise. Each side repre- 
sented an economic class. The interests of each class directly 
challenged those of the other. There was no standard of ad- 
justment that both would recognize. So long as each party 
maintained its position, local business would be blockaded, 
and the effects might paralyze the industries of the country. 
Sooner or later someone must yield. As the hostile interests 
recognized no moral tribunal competent to adjust the unal- 
terable minimum of their differences, the only alternative 
must be a test of force. But industrial war of the magnitude 
now threatened must soon convince every serious mind that 
neutrality is unthinkable. 

Halleck set himself the task of analyzing the situation as 
he had seen it developing during the week. Ruling out 
prejudice on both sides, and neglecting lesser details, what 
were the essentials at stake? He did not feel sure that he 
could consistently play the role of a visitor from Mars, or of 
a historian tracing the record a thousand years hence, but he 
honestly made the attempt. 

He had soon reduced the confusion to this form : — On the 
one hand are employers demanding "Must I submit to out- 
side dictation? Have I not a right to run my business as I 
please?" The answer must be, "Yes, surely, provided your 
business ever can be yours in a sense that warrants you in 
fighting for it at the expense of your partnership with your 

40 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MEDIATOR 



. 4 
employees, and your trusteeship to the public. On the 

other hand are employees with their contention, "Have we 

not a right to organize, and does not that right carry with 

it the right to use the power of organization?" Again the 

answer must be, "Yes, surely, provided your organization is 

not for purposes, or is not operated according to policies, 

which convert your partnership with your employers, and 

your social trusteeship, into piracy upon the rights of others 

who do not choose to join your organization, or still others 

who depend upon you for your share of the world's work." 

But great combinations of fighting force, representing 
these opposite claims, were on the brink of war to force each 
other into submission. What could be said in the name of 
religion about such an issue? By an hour's hard thinking 
the ground had been cleared for the second stage in the process 
of preparing the message. Two hours later Halleck had de- 
cided on the main lines of his appeal for a Christian attitude 
toward the fighting issue. 

Halleck had a volume of mediaeval prayers, which had 
often been his recourse against unmanageable states of mind. 
They were voices out of a world with which he had hardly 
more than one impulse in common. In spite of mawkish de- 
tails, he found in them genuine aspiration to reach a spiritual 
rendering of life that would silence immediate discords. For 
thirty minutes Halleck tried the tonic of Basil, and Augus- 
tine, and Anselm, and Bernard, and Gregory, and Thomas a 
Kempis. It did not give him quite the same kind of satis- 
faction they seemed to desire, but it calmed and steadied him. 
It slacked his mind's grip on the evening's problem. It sent 
him to sleep with a glow of assurance that whether his own 
work counted much or little, he was enlisted in a winning 
cause. 



41 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE CRISIS 



THE CRISIS 



III 

THE CRISIS 

'It would surrender the fundamental principle that every 
business must be run by its owners, not by outsiders." 



AS Lyon entered the "Twentieth Century" Saturday after- 
noon, the Conductor handed him a bunch of letters and 
telegrams. He ordered a table for his compartment, and 
sent for the stenographer. Before the train had passed West 
Point, answers to the letters were ready for his signature. 
Among the telegrams sent out at Albany was an order to his 
chauffeur to have his car at the Van Buren St. station at 8 : 55 
the next morning. Another read : — 
"Mr. Walther Kissinger, 

4608 Woodlawn Ave., _ 

Chicago. 
Meet me at office tomorrow (Sunday) morning at nine. 

LOGAN LYON." 

Kissinger was precisely on time, but he found Lyon al- 
ready at his desk. Their greeting was that of men whose 
working relations were mutually satisfactory, without sugges- 
tion of further intimacy. 

"It's rough to call you down here Sunday morning, Mr. 
Kissinger, but we'll get through in time to go to church, and 
that's my cue today at any rate. It will help settle my mind 
into the proper spirit if you tell me the worst up to date ; and 
I can talk a little more to the point with my father this aft- 
ernoon if the facts are in the back of my head during the 
service." 

"We know nothing of importance beyond what I wired, 
except that late last night I got a pretty straight tip about 
the proposition the officers will ask the unions to endorse 
today." 

"Is it the general strike?" 

"No, at the start it's just the opposite. Whether the lead- 
ers have had this move in mind all along, or whether the new 
plan is an afterthought, I can't say. The last word, however, 
is for a complete change of front. Nothing that has been in 
dispute for the last two months is to be pressed, for a while 

45 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE CRISIS 



at any rate, by any of the unions. The scheme is now to 
make a test case with us. They're not going to claim a griev- 
ance against anybody else, and other people will be drawn in 
only by helping us. They are going to make an issue with 
the Avery Company alone. The demand will be that the 
company shall give a place on the Board of Directors to a 
representative elected by the help." 

"Have they lost their minds?" gasped Lyon. 

"Some of them say they have just found their minds." 

"What do they suppose they mean?" 

"Well, you know Graham is touted as the smartest labor 
leader yet, and " 

"He's several different kinds of a scoundrel, but it remains 
to be seen whether a smart one is in the combination." 

"At any rate he has hacked off a brand new chip for the 
shoulder of labor." 

"I should say he had! It's a plain case of 'whom the gods 
will destroy.' On its face every labor fight ever heard of be- 
fore has been a question of terms. It didn't strike at the un- 
derpinnings of things, except indirectly. This proposition 
means dynamiting the foundations of business, and turning 
the ruins over to lunatics as receivers. Does the fellow ac- 
tually think he can get any one to stand with him on that sort 
of a bluff? If he is fit to be at large he can't imagine for a 
minute that business at this late day can be reorganized on 
Quixotic principles. What's his game, and how far does he 
mean to play it?" 

For a moment Kissinger did not answer. He seemed to be 
balancing something that diverted his thoughts from Lyon's 
outburst. His features had been set in correctly emotionless 
business expression. Now a glimmer of light played under 
the surface, with good promise of flashing out in a frankly 
human symptom. 

Kissinger's family had intended him for a place in the 
foreign office. He had served his term in the army, and had 
passed his first law examinations, when he had come to this 
country as a subordinate in a special commission. Before he 
had been in the United States a month his whole outlook was 
changed. Nothing appeared to be within easier reach than 
wealth. In two or three months more he had decided to re- 
main in America. Diplomacy had come to look like a too 
long road to success, while business promised to be a short cut. 

46 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE CRISIS 



The Avery Company was just beginning to develop its foreign 
trade, and could use a German correspondent. It offered Kis- 
singer a position, with prospects of promotion. Without 
much hesitation he accepted. His accurate and methodical 
habits proved invaluable, but he had not the aggressive stuff 
that makes a manager. In a short time he was the confiden- 
tial secretary of the President of the company, but that was 
his limit. For years he had done duty at his post with the 
loyalty of a soldier. He had long ago given up ideas of inde- 
pendent business ventures. So far as his employers knew, he 
had no other ambition than to serve the company for all he 
was worth. 

Kissinger was essentially not a man of affairs, he was a seer 
of visions. He belonged to the race of Klopstock, and Schiller, 
and Arndt, and Uhland and Korner. A century earlier he 
would have been among those futile youths who first fought 
at Leipzig and Waterloo to free their country from Napoleon, 
and then formed the Burschenschaften to free it from itself. 
His prattle of "Ueberzeugungen" would have been as pious as 
theirs, and he would have had no doubt that lighting the 
Wartburg with bonfires of musty books was progressive states- 
manship. He lived the double life of routine and sentiment. 
The problem of making the two consistent had never fairly 
presented itself, nor had it occurred to him that neither of 
them was whole so long as they were separate. 

Practically Kissinger was an obedient and virtually auto- 
matic cog in the conventional machinery of society. In the of- 
fice his devotion to the company was as unreserved as though 
the thought of economic evils had never troubled his imag- 
ination. Out of business hours he was never quite himself 
unless he was dreaming dreams of reforming the world. He 
read the class of literature, and he cultivated the type of ac- 
quaintances, that wasted no attention upon feasible improve- 
ments, but devoted themselves to theories of an ideal society. 
Instead of stimulating actual invention, this speculation 
tended to make him timid and perfunctory. He knew no 
ways and means but those of his e very-day program. These 
got results. Any interference with them would have scan- 
dalized his sense of fitness. He was not aware of it, but his 
philosophy actually left room for only two alternatives ; either 
to be content with the established order of things, or to expect 
a miraculous transformation of the real world into the ideal. 

47 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE CRISIS 



Of forces capable of modifying social institutions he had no 
clear-cut conception. 

But there was another and more pathetic contradiction be- 
tween the two phases of Kissinger. Though he did not admit 
it to himself, he loathed the whole economic system, and all 
his affections responded to incoherent suggestions of a better 
condition. 

He had spared himself the outright confession, but in fact 
he was haunted by a feeling of degradation. He was not 
heroic, he was merely impressionable. He was sure the world 
was ruled by the coarser motives instead of the finer, and he 
revolted in spirit against his acquiescence. If he had consented 
to his sympathies rather than his prudence, he would long ago 
have rebelled against the whole social order. He would have 
denounced it as a scheme of cumulative inequality ; as cynical 
selfishness masquerading in a soiled domino of democracy; 
and he would have declared his individual independence. 
Since the luxury of that sort of genuineness was beyond his 
means, he simply allowed his practical and his speculative 
lives to develop each according to its bent, under an inviolable 
tradition of non-intercourse and non-intervention. 

For an instant the crisis that the two men were facing al- 
most surprised Kissinger into recognizing the antagonism be- 
tween his two selves. The unions that would present their 
ultimatum next morning were simply his theoretical secession 
incarnated. They were merely putting into action at a sin- 
gle point the sentiments that he cherished toward economic 
institutions in the abstract. A stronger man would have ac- 
cepted the challenge to renounce one side of himself or the 
other. Kissinger could neither reconcile his two selves nor 
renounce either. He could merely reserve them for favorable 
occasions. His theories had never of their own motion so 
far violated good form as to interrupt the course of business. 
Now that the actions of others had forced them into the day's 
work, he had a guilty feeling that they deserved arrest for dis- 
orderly conduct. Utopia seemed as much out of place in the 
Avery offices, as the company itself would be in Utopia. 

As an item in an actual business proposition, the conflict 
between routine and affection was too unequal to last. Before 
the pause was long enough for Lyon to notice it, Kissinger 
continued : — 

"I have seen Graham only two or three times, and have 

48 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE CRISIS 



very little to go on except what his friends say. They make 
him look like a hard man to fight. We shall go wrong though 
if we size him up as a rascal. In the first place, he has a good 
deal more money than he will ever spend on himself, and he 
doesn't seem to care for more." 

"Trust the people behind him to see that he soon has less." 

"'If they are in for that they are taking long chances. At 
present he is putting all his surplus into developing his min- 
ing properties in Idaho on a cooperative basis, and they all 
know it. He tells the men around him he is willing to pay his 
own salary and expenses, and a fair amount, like anybody 
else, to the common fund ; but beyond that it's got to be share 
and share alike in hard work for the cause, and plenty of it. 
They believe him. When his father died Graham had a 
chance to hire superintendents and spend his dividends with- 
out going near his property. Instead of that he dropped law 
and studied mining engineering three years. In his vacations 
he worked with the men. When he was through studying he 
settled in the camp, and told the men his policy was not only 
to increase the output, but to find a way for every man in the 
camp to get out of the business all he put in." 

"What does organizing strikes in Chicago have to do with 
that program?" 

"It didn't take him long to find that competitors wouldn't 
let him alone. He had to come East to deal with other con- 
cerns, and he says the more he has to do with financiers the 
better he likes working men. He claims that the long end of 
distribution belongs to the man who works with his hands, 
and that wits should take a larger part of their pay in the 
comfort of their job. His theory is that the interests of work- 
ers are not taken care of because they are not organized, and 
that the best of every economic deal goes to the men that float 
stocks instead of those that do the work." 

"The old story ! Every raw recruit to socialism thinks he 
has invented a brand new idea, and the rear rank in the awk- 
ward squad expects to sweep vested interests off the earth." 

Quarterly reports were so much more real to Kissinger than 
social reforms, and days of reckoning with the directors had 
so long been the chief signs of his zodiac, that he had nothing 
to say for applied utopianism that would not have sounded 
foolish to himself in a session with Lyon. He merely made 
semi-conscious notes of exceptions, and stuck to his facts. 

49 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE CRISIS 



"I have not found out how long Graham has been working 
on this scheme, or how far he is looking ahead ; but as I figure 
it out, this move against us doesn't bulk very large in his cal- 
culations, win or lose. It is merely the opening gun of a big 
political campaign. He reckons that there's enough working- 
men's class-consciousness awake in the country to capture the 
government in most of the states and at Washington. It is 
only waiting for the right sort of issue to rally on. He doesn't 
pick the Avery Company as better or worse than other corpo- 
rations. We are simply in the open and easy to attack. We 
really haven't anything that he would take as a gift. It 
isn't victory he's after but an issue. Any old question will do, 
so long as it makes capital and labor line up on opposite sides. 
He wouldn't give a picayune to get one of his men into our 
Board. Indeed the worst jolt we could give him would be to 
accept his terms on the spot, and tell him to name his man. 
What he is after is not directors but recognition of an idea. 
His strategy is to concentrate the working class vote on the 
principle of labor representation in control of corporations." 

"In other words, if the thing worked out, nothing but labor 
would be represented." 

"That's about the size of it. Labor and capital are to 
change places. Labor will dictate and capital must submit." 

"Suppose we take this view of the movement, how much 
more do you get about the fighting strength it can muster?" 

"There is nothing definite yet beyond their own claims. 
We can't tell how far they know their strength, or take stock 
in their own estimates. They say they are organized inde- 
pendent of the unions in half the states, and will be in the 
rest as fast as it is worth while. These organizations are sup- 
posed to be strike supporters. At the right time they will blos- 
som out as political machines. They seem to be officered pretty 
largely by the union leaders, but take in everybody that 
thinks he has a grudge against capital. The funds are not 
held directly by the unions, and it looks as though they came 
from a good many sources that could not be tapped for strictly 
union purposes. Our fight will hold the attention of the 
country, and furnish material for a campaign of education 
along the lines of 'smash the trusts,' and 'government for the 
people, not for the corporations.' In other words, it is one 
more way of trying to get the balance of power for the labor 
interests. The fight will be narrowed down to the issue 'law- 

50 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE CRISIS 



making by the many instead of the few.' It is not hard to 
show on paper how the results of two out of the last four presi- 
dential contests might have been reversed by a little less rad- 
ical break with economic prejudice. Graham's friends think 
he can unite the different sorts of people who want a new deal, 
and they believe his plan of operations will succeed. Noth- 
ing is to be said about politics at the outset, but after the 
country is roused by the labor fight the political reserve will 
be brought to the front. If I am on the right track, things 
are to be so shaped up that the next election will turn on the 
one question of rule by the workers or the capitalists." 

The two men had been by turns sitting, standing and 
pacing in zigzags across the office. The pantomime of jerky 
movement and cramped attitude fairly reflected their state 
of mind. Except when he had thrown in a remark, Lyon's 
manner had not shown whether he was listening to Kissinger 
or following an independent train of thought. As Kissinger 
stopped speaking, Lyon halted close to him, and for a few 
seconds looked steadily into his eyes; or rather he seemed 
less to be looking into Kissinger's eyes than trying to see 
something through them. Then, with the air of having set- 
tled a question, he seated himself and resumed the discussion. 
In sharp contrast with his usual habit, he spoke haltingly, as 
though he was feeling his way from each word to the next. 

"Your theory, Mr. Kissinger, would explain several things 
that I see no other way to account for. I had thought of it 
before, but hadn't facts enough to test it. Whether it proves 
to be correct or not, I am ready to adopt it for working pur- 
poses. But that after all merely puts the case before us. It 
settles nothing, except that we rule out the bluff idea. 
Whether the plan in the large is crazy or not is their affair. 
We needn't resolve ourselves into a lunacy commission. Our 
first concern is that Graham can give us a fight, and we must 
assume that he means to do it. The next thing is to count 
the cost and decide whether the game is worth the candle. 
Our grade of labor can't be replaced offhand. It might mean 
a shut-down for months. That would cost us at the start 
several million dollars' worth of contracts, besides the indirect 
consequences. You think we could side-track the whole 
thing by letting one of them into our Board?" 

5i 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE CRISIS 



"Sure! Unless the terms are changed today, that would 
concede all they ask." 

"And what then?" 

"Why, they would have to pick out a corporation that would 
stand pat." 

"Suppose everybody paid the price?" 

"Well, in that case they would sooner or later get around 
to us again with a demand for two directors, and so on till 
they had a majority everywhere." 

"I see, curing the morphine habit with more morphine." 

A grim smile relaxed the tense expression of Lyon's face. 
It changed to a chuckle, and developed into a series of com- 
bined laughs and whoops that blended ridicule with admi- 
ration. 

"It reminds me of a gang of amateur counterfeiters," he 
gurgled, "trying to bribe the United States Government. I 
wonder if they'd be willing to throw in a job to any of us 
under the new management !" 

Kissinger's sense of humor was not equal to the occasion. 
To him both business and social reform were too serious for 
levity. His mind was baffled by the contrast between con- 
crete and ideal principles. He did not harbor a suspicion 
that questions were begged on both sides; still less could he 
indulge in irreverence toward either; even when they came 
into collision. He simply waited till Lyon should return to 
a business basis. 

Lyon's change of mood may have been either cause or 
effect of a new grasp of the situation. At all events, when 
his serious tone returned the problem had reduced itself in 
his mind to very simple terms. 

"We could insure our business for several years at least 
by admitting a labor delegate to our Board?" 

"That is my opinion," confirmed Kissinger, "assuming of 
course that we could remove the legal difficulty of making a 
director of a man who owns no stock in the company." 

Lyon suppressed another spasm of levity and dryly re- 
marked: — "I believe corporations have been known to over- 
come difficulties of that nature when it was to their ad- 
vantage. But would there be any difficulty about reducing 
a director chosen under such circumstances to the value of a 
dummy?" 

"I can't see how he could have any influence on the busi- 

52 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE CRISIS 



ness whatever, unless the other directors chose to humor 
him." 

"Precisely! In other words our insurance would cost us 
nothing. Our tangible assets would not be reduced, and our 
power of independent management would remain the same 
as before, but we should be free from labor disturbances for 
an indefinite period. Why isn't it a clear case of getting a 
whole lot for nothing?" 

"It would be if it didn't violate business principles," Kis- 
singer answered, with the air of a man testifying against his 
own interests under cross-examination. Lyon would as soon 
have suspected economic unsoundness in a cash-register as 
in Kissinger, and the signs passed undetected. On the con- 
trary, Lyon had no doubt that he had rather shocked Kis- 
singer by seeming to dally with temptation. He went on 
with the aim of restoring the confidence of the literal-minded 
secretary, as well as of clinching the conclusion. 

"Now you come to the other side of the ledger, Mr. Kis- 
singer. It would cost us nothing except everything. It 
would surrender the fundamental principle that every busi- 
ness must be run by its owners, not by outsiders. At just the 
time when it is more necessary than ever for all the business 
interests of the country to stand together against socialism, 
it w r ould make us silent partners of the socialists. There is 
only one alternative, if we propose to keep on doing business. 
The other thing would turn us into pirates. We can afford 
to go to pieces fighting for our rights, but we can't afford to 
succeed by making common cause with anarchy. If the 
case they put up to us tomorrow turns out as we expect, there 
will be no room for a difference of opinion on the main ques- 
tion. We shall simply be up against the problem of ways 
and means to force the fighting." 

If Kissinger had clearly understood himself, his dilemma 
would have been cruel. Fortunately his dreams had never 
shaped themselves aggressively enough to dispute precedence 
with his duties. For every-day purposes the decision seemed 
to him as inevitable as it did to Lyon. But to the other 
idealistic self that would answer to his name when he was 
fairly free from the atmosphere of the office, the logic was 
utterly irrelevant. The Czar might decree that there should 
be no more music in his dominions, and the music might have 

53 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE CRISIS 



to stop, but it would not prove that tyranny is better than 
music. If we do not know how to make business anything 
but business, if business must be a tyrant, not a servant, then 
human rights must be devoured by business as tinder is con- 
sumed by flame. 

Kissinger had found no way for the world to go on without 
taking business for granted ; and so far as he could see, 'busi- 
ness principles were as fixed as the laws of physics. But 
there were all the human emotions and sentiments and aspira- 
tions. They made a world of their own. They demanded 
of business that it should take its orders from them, and 
build a world which they should occupy. There was inso- 
lence and sacrilege in the logic of business that arrogated to 
itself the right to own and regulate the world, and to de- 
nounce and defame moral contestants of the claim as mis- 
chief-makers and disturbers of the peace. 

The talk then turned to details that must be taken up the 
next morning. 

It would be too much to say that Kissinger had progressed 
in a couple of hours toward a common center for his two 
selves. Each of them had become more self-conscious, but 
the contrast was so much more evident that nothing but con- 
flict between them was in prospect. The net result of the 
conference for his whole mental attitude was rather a con- 
firming of his sense of helplessness and humiliation. He 
was nearer to distinct classification of himself as a bond ser- 
vant to an inexorable machine. He was more aware that his 
own predicament was despicable. He was rather more per- 
suaded that it could not be helped. He did not know that 
he was a fatalist, and he had never called himself a pessimist, 
but in the last few minutes his view of human destiny had 
passed under a cloud. So far as he could see, there was no 
prospect of promoting the kind of life his feelings demanded. 
From this time on his business fidelity was likely to be more 
dogged, but his temper would be more depressed. 

With Lyon it had not been a question of feelings but of 
decisions. Business was to him a fully charted sea. Until 
recently he had been no more disturbed by speculations about 
what might be possible if business were on a different basis, 
than a Sandy Hook pilot would be turned from his course 
by theories of possible geologic changes in the Atlantic coast. 

54 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE CRISIS 



Lyon had imagination, and in college he was considered a 
good deal of a philosopher, but he had disciplined himself in 
dismissing non-essentials and in confining himself strictly to 
the point. Things took their turn, and at times received 
his undivided attention, which he would have been at a loss 
to place in a reasoned scheme of life. He was not conscious 
of needing logical schemes beyond his business system, and 
these digressions had not put him at odds with himself. 
They were merely diversions from the main current of busi- 
ness, and were not to be taken seriously as competitors. 

Lyon had a practical man's horror of uncertainty. He 
had been worried not so much because of the coming fight 
as because it was so largely a fight in the dark. A theory of 
the campaign was a relief. Costly as the struggle was likely 
to be, he felt that the problem had been simplified, and that 
what remained was adjustment of details. 

"We seem to have covered everything, and I can talk to 
my father this afternoon with my eyes open. Today's de- 
velopments may turn us back to our previous theory, but we 
shall be prepared for either line of action tomorrow morning. 
My auto is waiting. Shall we go over and give Halleck a 
chance at us?" 

"Mrs. Kissinger and Elsie will represent the family. I 
can do better at home." 

"Then let Parker take you there after he drops me." 

As the office door closed, Lyon had something like a sense 
of relief at leaving himself behind for a while. Kissinger 
felt a slight access of animation in prospect of rejoining 
himself. 



55 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MISFITS 



THE MISFITS 



IV 

THE MISFIT 

"Mrs. Kissinger subscribed in a passive way to the formal 
creed that it is everybody's duty to be useful ; but she knew 
of no way in which her own daughter could be useful 
without losing caste." 

IF Kissinger was less unreal to himself in his family than in 
the company's office, it was because he took more for 
granted. He did not probe his domestic situation. It did 
not so directly antagonize his dreams. He had formed no 
distinct images of family life in contrast with his own. There 
had never been appreciable lack of harmony between himself 
and his wife. He was proud of his daughter, and she was 
always affectionate toward her parents. Yet Kissinger was 
occasionally conscious of a forlorn feeling that he was not a 
part of the family. It seemed to be less his larger self than a 
group to which he was welcomed by courtesy. If he actually 
belonged there it would have had a different tone. Some- 
thing seemed to be lacking. In a vague way he felt an ab- 
sence of sentimental factors, which might have made his 
home more complete. So far as he ever tried to account for it, 
he was inclined to rest with the explanation that it was sim- 
ply the American atmosphere. He thought his wife would 
probably have had similar feelings if he had taken her to 
live in Germany. It was not to be expected that he could 
transform the whole American environment. Having mar- 
ried into a foreign country, it was probably inevitable that he 
should remain to a certain extent a foreigner in his own 
family. 

Closer inspection would have raised the question whether 
the alien element in the family, was Kissinger or his wife. 
If men and women of her parents' generation could have been 
called as experts upon the subject, they would doubtless have 
expressed the uniform view that the wife's modification of 
the family was less national than individaul. All that might 
be learned of her ancestry would tend to strengthen this 
opinion. 

Ellen Wells retained vivid impressions, partly direct and 
partly transmitted, of the storm and stress period following 
the fire. Her father was one of the men who created the new 

59 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MISFITS 



city. Any enterprise that Enoch Wells failed to endorse 
ranked in the shady list. Mrs. Wells had come with her hus- 
band from an Ohio farm. She was rich in all those essentials 
that grow by grafting larger world experiences upon Scotch- 
Irish tradition. Her education was that of the prosperous 
rural home, the country school, and the Presbyterian meet- 
ing house. From girlhood she had met occasions as they 
came, doing her best in trivial and important things alike, 
never wasting speculations beforehand about her ability, and 
never nursing regrets over her limitations. When the arti- 
ficial distinctions between Chicago people disappeared in the 
flame and smoke, Mr. and Mrs. Wells were among those who 
at once rose to the eminence of their qualities. They had 
courage, judgment, honesty, public spirit and the joy of work. 
Never was charter patented to clearer nobility than was 
unchartered in the generation of men and women whose only 
capital was their character, but who wrought that character 
in a decade into the plant and the business and the ideals of 
the foremost western town. They never faltered till their 
work was done. Then they began to betray to themselves, 
rather than to each other or to the heedless world, a sort of 
bashfulness in the presence of their own achievements. Their 
work was greater than their thought. They had been adapt- 
ing means to ends with but the faintest shadow of self-con- 
sciousness. They had not reflected that they were less build- 
ing than planting. They had been the enterprising folk of a 
typical western county-seat. The chief esthetic element 
which their eager lives could entertain was a semi-humorous 
habit of picturing the larger destinies in reserve for the prai- 
rie metropolis. In their serious hours, and those not serious 
were minutes, they were planning and doing the hard work 
that the passing moment demanded. But distress relieved, 
homes rebuilt, business resumed, the machineries of life re- 
stored and improved, they had occasional time to look around 
and within themselves and to take thought of their record. 
Then the largeness of it all began to produce the first hesita- 
tion. These path-breakers had never distrusted themselves 
when work was ahead, but it had turned out to be so big, and 
mixed, so many new people had appeared, it was so much 
more conventional and impersonal than they had intended, 
that they began to be overawed. Life threatened to pass from 
the literal into the mystical. The World's Columbian Expo- 

60 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MISFITS 



sition was their resolution to repeat and so to reassure them- 
selves. They would not abdicate their own realness. They 
would confirm the probability of their own past by doing the 
impossible in the present. 

It was the audacity of a splendid humility. If they had 
builded better than they knew, they would now show that 
they well knew how to build. They had not gone through 
the discipline of difficulty to flinch from new enterprise. They 
were conscious of strength, and skill, and ideals, and to save 
their own self-respect they would put their reserve force into 
a piece of work fit to prove their past no accident. 

Mr. Wells did not live to share in this masterpiece of Chi- 
cago maturity, and his wife was no longer able to act on the 
Woman's Board when the work approached completion, but 
no one had larger influence than they in forming the public 
character of which the plan and its execution were consistent 
expressions. 

Ellen Wells grew up with the impression that the family 
standing was a part of the foreordained order of things, but 
never quite comprehending what it meant. Not to be "promi- 
nent" would seem to her a disgrace, but she had never thought 
out the different kinds of prominence, nor the different titles 
to prominence, nor a standard to determine what sort of 
prominence is worth while. To mingle with the leaders of 
Chicago society was to her the breath of life. Not that they 
were more congenial than others whose names never appeared 
in the papers; not that they were more like herself; it was 
simply family tradition to move with the leaders. 

When she met Kissinger she was returning from the six 
months in Europe following the end of her school days. His 
foreignness had just enough glamour to dazzle her inexpe- 
rience. It fitted into the rude frame of romance that she 
had pieced together from the litter of light fiction and the 
scraps of fact which her short excursions into life had col- 
lected. Their wedding was one of the smartest events of that 
relatively simple period. 

Not long after came the sudden death of Mr. Wells, 
hastened no doubt by the shock of treachery that crippled his 
business and left but a fraction of his fortune. Then the 
lingering illness of her mother, the birth of three children, 
the death of Mrs. Wells, and an accident that confined Mrs. 
Kissinger herself to the house for a year, filled time in which 

61 



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THE MISFITS 



her world left her far behind. Her old acquaintances had 
not forgotten her. Indeed she had often been surprised by 
signs of sympathy from persons hardly in her calling list. 
But she began to be vaguely aware that her own status was 
not precisely her mother's. People depended on Mrs. Wells, 
and looked up to her. Nobody seemed to find Mrs. Kissinger 
essential. She would have perished rather than admit it, but 
in the niche reserved for her heart's select skeletons there 
was a nasty suspicion that she was being pitied and patronized. 

Thereupon her resources rallied around an absorbing pur- 
pose. It became the passion of her life to seem as important 
as her parents had been. Her family must be recognized. 
Her social standing must be respected. She must rank with 
the best people. 

It was not a mean aim. Mrs. Kissinger wanted to be worth 
her reputation and to deserve her place. Her mother had, 
why should she not? That her husband and herself were 
lesser factors in the life of the town than her parents had 
been, she could not reconcile. That prominence equal to 
theirs, if not due to the accident of wealth, must rest on some 
sort of individuality much stronger than hers or Mr. Kissin- 
ger's, was an idea too subtle for her thinking. 

Mrs. Kissinger was not an inferior woman, but she was ob- 
trusively mediocre. She had not been obliged, like her father 
and mother, to make her surroundings. She was bred for a 
life that others had made. She would have fitted well in the 
situation that her parents' generation created, if that situa- 
tion had not ruthlessly changed. She had neither imagina- 
tion, nor force, nor leisure nor money to fill a like place in 
the newer life. Her instincts were wholesome rather than 
whole. She aspired toward better things, not because she had 
distinct and balanced aims, but her home life had started her 
in the right direction. She had become a club woman, not 
because she had very clear notions of what a club could do, 
but because a club was tangible, and might help to satisfy the 
longing she felt for something more than her life contained. 
She believed in "culture" without forming a definite notion of 
what it might mean. The "enlargement of woman's sphere" 
was a cardinal point in her creed, but beyond the dues of do- 
mestic loyalty, and the proprieties of the social intercourse to 
which she had prescriptive rights, the boundaries of that 
sphere were nebulous to her mind. 

62 



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THE MISFITS 



Mrs. Kissinger's demands upon life were not really her 
own ; they were invented by other people, and she felt forced 
to adopt them to escape being left out. She had a fitful fear 
that things were going on among the best people which 
she was in danger of missing. The early death of the two 
younger children brought her genuine grief, but she never 
realized the measure of the calamity which limited the scope 
of her natural interests. At this period all her anxieties cen- 
tered about the problem of her daughter's prospects. 

The discriminating classification of the society column 
placed Elsie in the category "beautiful and accomplished." 
That she was beautiful no one capable of recognizing radiant 
girlhood could have found excuse to deny. Her beauty was 
not a mere external aspect of facial form and expression. It 
was a compound of affluent health, sunny temperament, eager 
sympathy and a tact of mental coloring that animated her 
most ordinary actions. Both men and women, of all ages and 
types, frequently expressed in various ways their sense of debt 
to her for merely existing. Her presence always stimulated 
good cheer, and kindly feeling, and complaisancy with life 
in general. She seemed to be made for happiness and a maker 
of happiness. 

The subject of her accomplishments was somewhat more 
ambiguous. She did everything so easily that she did noth- 
ing particularly well. She had no more recollection of learn- 
ing her father's language than her mother's, and when she 
was taken at the age of twelve for two years in a Tochterschule 
with her German cousins, she had little trouble in entering 
their classes and getting as high marks as they did in all the 
work ; but her knowledge of German language and literature 
halted at the level of a child of fourteen. At her graduation 
from Ansley Hall she had received the prize for the best rank 
in the class ; but it was well known among the girls that she 
spent less time and worry than any of them upon her studies. 
With only the simplest rudiments of musical education, she 
could sing all the latest popular airs, in a decidedly "catchy" 
style, playing her own accompaniments from memory, and 
she had amused herself enough with the violin to prove that 
with study she might easily have become a respectable per- 
former. She had often been cast for leading parts in school 
theatricals, but her success gave no real proof of ability to 
accomplish anything serious in dramatic art. She was simply 

63 



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THE MISFITS 



her exuberant self upon the stage, and that was enough to 
satisfy all the requirements of amateur standards. She was 
called an athletic girl, but in outdoor sports she was invari- 
ably just skillful enough to be good company. Her interest 
in none of them was sufficient to make her excel. 

For the sort of reasoners who derive generalizations from a 
single example, Elsie Kissinger would have settled a leading 
social principle. It might be stated in the form: — Enlarged 
opportunity for women, without corresponding access of mas- 
culinity, is a misfortune. She was irresponsibly feminine. 
She followed no resolutions of her own, but merely selected 
the pressures to which she would yield. While her instincts 
were all refined, it would require little imagination to conjure 
the plot of her ruin if she had been thrust into an environ- 
ment that was discreetly bad. She was assailable not by temp- 
tation to defy her ideals, but by solicitation to comply with 
influences that would presently dissipate the ideals. 

Mrs. Kissinger was unconsciously creating the role of her 
daughter's Nemesis. She was a protection against the sort 
of evil to which unguarded girls as pure as Elsie every day 
succumb. At the same time she had set a mark that virtually 
excluded aims for positive good. If Elsie had chosen for her- 
self upon leaving school, she would have taken a full course 
of training either as Kindergartnerin or as nurse. Each alter- 
native was prompted by normal womanly traits. The girl was 
not yet so artificialized that she had to be useless in order to 
be happy. There was healthy human feeling in the impulse 
to have a vocation. There was undeveloped maternal instinct 
in her preference of occupations. 

Elsie's inclinations affected her mother as distressingly 
vulgar. Mrs. Kissinger subscribed in a passive way to the 
formal creed that it is everybody's duty to be useful ; but she 
knew of no way in which her own daughter could be useful 
without losing caste. The callings which Elsie was thinking 
about seemed to have no more in their favor than the position 
of a salesgirl in a down town store. Mrs. Kissinger would not 
have questioned the propriety of either for the daughters of 
people not in society, and she could frame no very dependable 
reason why it would be discreditable for Elsie to follow her 
choice. She was simply sure that some way must be found 
to turn her in another direction. 

She was tactful enough to avoid direct discussion of the 

64 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MISFITS 



question. She was slightly subdued by a dim feeling of in- 
feriority to her daughter in many ways, and she especially 
distrusted her ability to get the better of her in an argument. 
When the subject once came up indirectly, Elsie had ex- 
pressed her ideas in such vigorous terms that her mother's 
eagerness to create a diversion was confirmed. Elsie drew a 
contemptuous picture of the plight of a girl without occupa- 
tion, and forced by fear of social custom to advertise the con- 
stant confession "I am helpless and must stay helpless till 
some man marries me." As Mrs. Kissinger was at a loss to 
substitute a more favorable rendering of the fact, she applied 
her ingenuity in other lines. 

A batch of invitations to Elsie for Summer visits gave Mrs. 
Kissinger more than ordinary satisfaction. With a little ef- 
fort she contrived to prolong the series well into October. By 
that time she had completed arrangements for Elsie's "pres- 
entation to society." From the mother's point of view the 
daughter was an immediate success. More determined de- 
cisions than Elsie's would have weakened under the pressure 
of engagements that made her first season a continuous varia- 
tion of delicious excitement. 

It was no trouble for Mrs. Kissinger to bridge over the next 
Summer. In the first place, the season's experience had not 
only overtaxed Elsie's abundant physical strength, but it had 
operated as a moral anesthetic. If her opinions were un- 
changed, there was less energy in her preferences. It was 
easier to enjoy than to endeavor. She was left in a lotus- 
eating temper. In the second place, the competition for her 
visits was sharper than the year before. Circumstances easily 
insured gravitation into the second season and then the third. 

In certain respects Elsie Kissinger had been improved by 
running the social gauntlet. She had apparently lost noth- 
ing of her genuineness, and she seemed not in the least spoiled 
by extravagant flattery. Probably because society offered 
nothing that she was sure she very much wanted, she had not 
developed the spites and jealousies of those women to whom 
society is a struggle for life. The game had not yet become 
desperate for her. She was present rather as an interested 
spectator. It was playful humor rather than cynicism when 
she said that she deserved no credit for readiness to step aside 
at any time in favor of other girls, because it might be differ- 
ent if she should ever meet a real man. She had amply veri- 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MISFITS 



fied her premonition of the unreality of the life her mother 
preferred; and as a matter of pure judgment she believed 
more strongly than ever that it was dignified for a girl to 
choose a serious employment, in which she could be inde- 
pendent, while it was poorly disguised degradation to join in 
the social display of professional uselessness. 

On the other hand, while her perceptions had been sharp- 
ened, her purposes had been dulled. The toxic effect of com- 
promise was very evident in Elsie Kissinger's compliant con- 
tinuance in a course she despised. She had apparently stopped 
balancing choice of careers, and had accepted a destiny which 
it would cost too much effort to reverse. 

At the same time it is the irony even of the idle life that 
it is held sooner or later to a declaration of intentions. One 
cannot remain forever the guileless debutante of the first 
season. A girl who has not finished her play days, or people 
who have an assured position in life, may frankly use society 
as an end. When a girl is old enough for her status to be- 
come problematical, she may use society only as a means. If 
she is among the select few who justify themselves as bachelor 
girls, society bows to her success and is happy to hold her stir- 
rup. If she is among the typical many to whom society is 
principally a matrimonal speculation, realization on the in- 
vestment may not be indefinitely deferred. After the permitted 
period of grace, society becomes the sort of dissolving tableau 
in which the proud pose of the unsuited passes imperceptibly 
into the painful predicament of the unsuccessful. At thought 
of a fourth season Elsie was hardly yet apprehensive, but the 
order of events which she had hitherto regarded in a wholly 
impersonal light was at last beginning to suggest applications 
to herself. 

What had been to Elsie an episode, with occasional fore- 
warnings of a possible crisis, had really become the family 
problem. It affected her father and her mother very differ- 
ently. They tacitly avoided comparison of views upon the 
subject. Both brooded constantly upon it, and this was really 
the flower, if not the root, of that foreign element which pro- 
duced in Kissinger the uneasy feeling of an alien in his own 
household. 

If he had been consulted, Kissinger would have heartily 
encouraged Elsie's earlier ambitions. His belief in the dig- 
nity of labor, for both men and women, was literal and sin- 

66 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MISFITS 



cere. He felt that evasion of the universal law of service was 
as dangerous to the individual as to society. He distrusted 
people who did not work, and he felt that his daughter would 
be contaminated by contact with them. He believed that 
marriage was desirable for both men and women, and he 
hoped that Elsie would come to the same view; but he had 
no dearer wish than that she might make herself independent 
enough to be able to marry from choice and not from nec- 
essity. 

Mrs. Kissinger was neither mercenary nor unscrupulous, 
but she was frankly certain that it would be a misalliance if 
Elsie should marry outside the socially prominent class ; and 
among the marriageable men in that class in Chicago her dis- 
criminations, to say the least, erred on the side of worldly pru- 
dence. She had probably never heard of Tennyson's York- 
shire farmer ; but so far as she could influence her daughter it 
was strictly in the line of his policy. To do Mrs. Kissinger 
justice, it was guilelessness rather than indifference that led 
her to encourage the attentions of men who were received by 
well informed families only on the most distant terms, and 
purely from regard for their relatives. 

Kissinger was hardly better posted than his wife about some 
of the men that surrounded Elsie, but he suspected them on 
general principles. Most of them belonged in the class that 
had been systematically predisposed to vice by the unwise in- 
dulgence of their parents. The best that could reasonably be 
predicted of them was that, for the sake of appearances, they 
would exercise their license within limits which would save 
exposure. That they would ever become good citizens was 
hardly to be expected. 

The cloud gathering over the Kissinger household was 
ominous in two opposite aspects. The father was beginning 
to tremble for fear that his daughter might marry one of 
these perverts. The mother was in the first stages of hysteria 
for fear she might not 



67 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROPHET 



THE PROPHET 



V 

THE PROPHET 

'It followed that if more churches could shed their religious 
trappings and adopt an essentially religious policy toward 
the needs of everyday people, they would presently be 
alive with the very masses that now stand aloof." 



HALLECK was one of the few ministers in Chicago who 
preached to more men than women. A first glance at 
his congregation might suggest that it was a commercial asso- 
ciation, with a sprinkling of additions from the families of 
the older strata. There was nothing ecclesiastical about the 
hall in which the service was held, and still less of the tradi- 
tional demeanor of piety in the assembly itself. The details 
of seating the people, and of conducting the program, would 
impress a stranger as first of all business-like. At the same 
time one could hardly fail to note the general decorum and 
dignity and thoughtfulness. Anyone accustomed to classi- 
fying audiences would quickly decide that, while this one 
represented no extraordinary grade of intellect, it responded 
principally to the stimulus of reason, rather than of emotion. 
Perhaps it would not be remarked at first contact, but after 
one or two repetitions of the test it would be clear that a sec- 
tarian tone was conspicuous by its absence. 

Indeed, though some of the older members of the church 
would doubtless repudiate the finding, it would not require 
phenomenal shrewdness to make out that the only basis of 
common understanding between congregation and minister 
amounted substantially to this creed: — 'We have all the 
centuries of religious yearnings behind us. They have 
threshed out a great many religious conceptions. They have 
left us a record that is instructive. We learn from it much 
more about the limits of profitable prying into the mysteries 
of life than positive knowledge of what is beyond the range 
of human vision. This tradition, and especially the Jewish 
and Christian portion, furnishes a fund of common ideas 
which we accept or reject according to our own judgment; 
and it gives to our minds a certain sympathetic bent in deal- 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROPHET 



ing with fundamental questions ; but it leaves us free to reach 
our own decisions. We have the same essential problems 
that have puzzled people before our day, but they come up 
in new forms, and it takes more to satisfy us with anything 
proposed as a solution. On the whole, the main thing seems 
to be to face life with perfect candor. We want to know the 
truth, whether it is new or old, and we believe it is our busi- 
ness to square ourselves with the truth, however it hits." 

Although Halleck had never used precisely this language 
in explaining his own beliefs, his whole policy put it into 
consistent practice. Before he had been in the pastorate a 
year he had decided that his mission was chiefly with a type 
of people who had no respect for the cloth, nor for anything 
else that would prevent them from meeting whatever he 
might say with the challenge, "How do you know?" He 
did not feel bound in consequence to restrict himself to state- 
ments that he could prove. He simply made up his mind 
that he would never lend himself to the duplicity of trying to 
enforce by authority anything which he knew to be merely 
a matter of opinion. 

At first Halleck had attracted only feeble attention. The 
church had been principally the personal following of a 
preacher gifted with a rare combination of qualities, and in 
the nature of the case his influence could not be transferred to 
a successor. The task which the young minister undertook 
was to build up a new constituency fast enough to replace 
defections from the old. His success was by no means rapid. 
In two or three years, however, he had won a hearing, and 
the congregation had so increased in size that a larger hall 
was leased. If the new subscribers for sittings had been 
polled for their reasons, the replies would have pointed more 
to Halleck's personality than to his preaching. He made 
his impression primarily as an earnest fellow-man trying to 
avoid shams in getting at a sane version of life. He was 
never a priest working the credit of supposed inside informa- 
tion about the unknowable. 

Without the slightest affectation, or pretense or appeal to 
credulity, Halleck expected his congregation to grant one 
fundamental position. He believed, and in all his preaching 
he assumed, that the world had discovered no more convinc- 
ing moral attitude than that of Jesus. He insisted that our 
judgments of ethical values are credible in the degree in 

72 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROPHET 



which they may be reaffirmed from Jesus' point of view. 

At the same time, Halleck always referred to Jesus as a 
test of the spirit of life rather than of the rule of life. In 
his thinking this was a cardinal distinction. He was sure 
that some of the most costly mistakes of the Church had been 
due to disregard of the distinction. He found the religious 
significance of Jesus not primarily in any addition he may 
have made to the world's knowledge of what is right, but in 
his influence upon the world's appreciation of the importance 
of doing the right that is known. He said for example, that 
Jesus had none of the special information necessary for draft- 
ing a Russian constitution, or an American tariff. His gift 
was the more fundamental one of knowing the moral attitude 
that a man ought to maintain when his duty leads up to one 
of these tasks. 

The fact that his public was steadily growing, and that the 
proportion of men increased faster than the total gain, was 
not only a personal gratification to Halleck, but he took it 
as a valuable item of evidence in social and religious psychol- 
ogy. He did not question that the preponderating demand 
for religions of authority reflected the average mental juve- 
nility of mankind. So far as they could not be disposed 
of as mere variations of religions of authority, Halleck was 
inclined to hail even the most extravagant of the religions of 
mystification, of which the last quarter century had been so 
prolific, as in part onsets of approaching mental puberty. 
But he believed there was already more maturity among 
modern men than religious statistics would indicate. He 
did not find the marks of it chiefly among the people who 
considered themselves highly cultured. On the contrary, 
if he had been a free lance in education, as he was in re- 
ligion, he would have said that a so-called cultured person is 
one who is bound to show cause why he should not be sus- 
pected of superinduced incompetence to see things as they 
are. He detected mental maturity rather in the rare peo- 
ple, educated or uneducated, who are able to face life as a 
whole in a genuinely candid temper. 

One of Halleck's unpublished opinions was that a consid- 
erable fraction of the unchurched, and the partially churched, 
were to be classed not as irreligious, but as more religious than 
the churches. It followed that if more churches would shed 
their religious trappings and adopt an essentially religious 

73 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROPHET 



policy toward the needs of every day people, they would pres- 
ently be alive with the very masses that now stood aloof. 

The mental maturity that Halleck detected, as a trait of 
occasional men and women, was a sort of sophisticated matter- 
of-factness. It was a minority exception which proved the 
rule that most men like to be humbugged. It was a habit, 
which a few men get through scientific training, but more 
from the discipline of their occupations, of demanding the 
facts of everything that claimed their attention. 

Halleck was sure that life had at last differentiated a type 
of men who want to be treated just as literally in religion as 
they expect to be in their trial balances, or the crop reports, 
or the statement of bank clearings. They do not require 
that religion shall appeal to the same interests, nor in the 
same terms, nor by the same standards. They require that 
religion shall observe the same distinctions between fact and 
fancy which have to be respected elsewhere. They require 
that religion shall justify itself as a literal interpretation of 
experience. They require that religion shall furnish a cred- 
ible perspective of life. They refuse submission to religion 
as a discipline superadded to life. 

A single case of the natural selection of a congregation of 
a couple of thousands from the population of Chicago would 
do little toward proving the general validity of a theory. Hal- 
leck realized that he might easily overestimate the influence 
of a single factor in his own success. It might be that he had 
a hearing in spite of being mistaken about the key to the 
modern man's attention. He was surely not tempted to 
magnify any inferences from his own experiments into laws 
for general application. He early adopted the rule for him- 
self, however, that he would never utter in his preaching any- 
thing which he could not repeat in less formal words, in a 
casual conversation at the club, or to a chance acquaintance 
in the smoking room of a Pullman car. 

Whatever Halleck might say, or refrain from saying, about 
the results of his work, he had attracted the notice of many 
other religious leaders. There had been vigorous debate 
among them about the extent to which his experience should 
be taken as a sign of the times. Arguments had often cov- 
ered the ground between two extremes. It was charged on 
the one hand that the sort of thing which Halleck repre- 
sented was not religion at all, but merely an unreligious 

74 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROPHET 



morality, with forged endorsement of religious phrases. On 
the other hand, a great many of the younger ministers were 
saying among themselves that Halleck had given them a 
better idea of what the expected restatement of religion would 
be like in practice than all the other theories and experiments 
together had suggested up to date. Meanwhile what Hegel 
would have called the synthesis of the two extremes was the 
working organization of which Halleck was the centre. 
There was no more masculine moral force in Chicago. 

On the previous Monday there had been a general min- 
isters' conference upon the topic, What can the pastors of 
Chicago do in the approaching labor crisis? When one of 
the pastors told a large contractor, a vestryman of his church, 
that he was on his way to take part in the discussion, and re- 
peated the subject, he received a flood of light from the frank 
ejaculation, "For God's sake, tell them to keep their mouths 
shut!" Belief that radical principles were presently to be on 
trial, and that there was danger of generating explosives in 
every attempt to guide public feeling, had been growing 
during the week. Halleck felt the current the moment he 
stood before the congregation. It thrilled and exhilarated 
him, and made him eager to do his part ; yet he had to brace 
himself with all his strength against surges of shame at the 
audacity of trying to make his feeble voice a factor in the 
coming struggle. 

Not precisely the same, but a corresponding conflict of emo- 
tions had quickened the pulse of the congregation during the 
earlier parts of the service. Halleck began his sermon in a 
tone which might have been called an echo of the hush that 
had fallen upon his hearers. There was no artifice in it, but 
merely spontaneous adaptation. His first sentence was equiva- 
lent to a pledge that, whether he said much or little, whether 
he spoke wisely or unwisely, he would try to deal frankly 
with the uppermost thought of the hour. 

"We should look in vain for anything that came to the 
knowledge of Jesus, or that is recorded anywhere in the Bible, 
which is an exact parallel of the social situation in Chicago 
today. 

"There have always been social classes, but until now never 
our social classes. 

"There have always been class struggles, but only today 
our class struggles. 

75 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROPHET 



"If there are people who think they can go to the Bible 
and get a ready-made solution of our present labor problems, 
as they can send the number of their watch to the factory and 
get a substitute for a broken wheel, they are doomed to be not 
only disappointed but dangerous. 

"Yet, in his most famous popular address, Jesus touched 
on the problem of poverty, as it was known in his day. It 
was not the modern poverty problem. It was very much 
simpler. But in telling people how to act about the bare neces- 
sities of life Jesus sounded a note which contains the secret of 
all permanent social harmony. 

"I quote enough of Jesus' words to indicate both the con- 
crete conditions that he had in mind, and the general prin- 
ciple by which he would test all schemes for social improve- 
ment. This is what he said, as reported by the Apostle 
Matthew : — 



1 l ' Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall 
eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. 
Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment! Behold 
the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather 
into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not of much 
more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit 
unto his stature? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider 
the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; 
yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which today 
is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 
O ye of little faith? Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? 
or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after 
all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth 
that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom and his 
righteousness ; and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not there- 
fore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. 
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' 

"Ever since these words were spoken," Halleck expounded, 
"the interpreters have been busy degrading them to base 
uses. It would be hard to find in the whole history of litera- 
ture a more vivid illustration of the rough old saw, 'No teacher 
can furnish ideas and brains too.' 

"Jesus has been made to teach that if people will be pious, 
God will do the rest. 

"What Jesus meant was that God has done the rest before- 
hand, and real piety consists in acting accordingly. 

"In other words, the only way to insure the supply of 

76 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROPHET 



human wants is to lead the kind of life which draws ration- 
ally on the resources that God has already provided. 

"Jesus did not say, Religion will feed you. He virtually 
said, 'Feeding yourselves is religion/ 

" Jesus was apparently talking to people who were thrift- 
less, like our southern negroes. They were tempting fate 
by shirking work, and, to use a slang phrase, 'laying down on 
God/ They were like an excessively pseudo-religious college 
classmate of mine, who one Sunday evening testified in prayer 
meeting : 'I had been taking a walk on the other side of the 
river. When the prayer meeting bells began to ring I was 
in the middle of the bridge. I dropped down on my knees 
and prayed the Lord that I might not be late.' 

"To that sort of people Jesus said 'Stop worrying about 
what will become of you if you spend your time worrying. 
Take up your part in the scheme of things, and the scheme 
of things will take care of you.' 

"The promises of religion are due only to the kind of piety 
that is practical. 

"Superstition spends itself on grafting experiments to beat 
the laws of nature. 

"Genuine religion learns the laws of nature, and conforms 
to them, and gets the benefits of their workings. 

"Not worry, but work, is the worship that pays. 

"Of course, a life philosophy so radical, packed into a few 
such proverbs as these, must be qualified and expanded and 
diluted in a thousand ways, before it can fertilize the popular 
mind. Expressed from the other point of view, human stu- 
pidity had to go through thousands of years of hard knock- 
ing against reality, before many wits were sharp enough to 
accept the truth of this philosophy. 

"But in our paraphrase of Jesus' words, so far, we have 
repeated only the alphabet of his complete idea. So much 
fits the case of the ordinary man, in his relations to every day 
tasks. The pith of this philosophy, however, is contained in 
what follows; and I know of nothing in the entire range of 
religion that cuts closer to the quick of our present social 
situation." 

By this time the hush of the congregation had become less 
strained. The audience had the manner of a greater jury 

77 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROPHET 



interested in the case. Many bodies were bent forward, as 
far as the next row of chairs would allow, not because it was 
difficult to hear, for Halleck's voice easily carried its lightest 
inflections to every part of the hall ; but rather as an involun- 
tary sign of attention. Halleck too was reassured by a re- 
turn of the feeling that he had a piece of real work on his 
hands, and he settled himself for the main action. 

"In summing up his talk to this multitude of commonplace 
folk, about the working partnership between the providence 
of God and human conduct, Jesus coined an axiom of moral 
economy: — 'Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteous- 
ness, and all these things shall be added unto you! 

"If we listen to all the social philosophers who have the ear 
of the world today, we hear no word that rings truer than this 
generalization of Jesus. 

"Curiously enough, and flattering to our pride of knowl- 
edge, the harmony is most apparent between the theorem of 
Jesus and the most modern phases of social philosophy. The 
interpretations of life which are giving most credible proof 
of their right to disturb tradition have at bottom most in 
common with the insight of the Great Teacher. 

"The eighteenth century mortgaged the nineteenth to a 
view of life from which it is the task of the twentieth century 
to earn our release. 

"The types of arms with which most nineteenth century 
battles were fought, are no more obsolete than the assortment 
and emphasis of ideas behind nineteenth century struggles. 

"The eighteenth century persuaded itself that the social 
world is made up of individuals whose independence of each 
other is the first law of life. 

"Wherever this general version of the world appeared with 
religious coloring, a sort of private wireless telegraphy be- 
tween each individual and God was pictured as the central 
feature in the moral structure; while no clear consistent ac- 
count was given of the bonds that unite men with one another. 

"Individualistic philosophy at its best is merely a refine- 
ment of selfishness. 

"It is a theory of paramount private rights unbalanced by 
recognition or guarantee of liabilities to the social whole. 

"Men on the high places know that the individualistic in- 
terpretation of life breaks down in presence of the facts. 

78 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROPHET 



"The intellectual and moral tone-givers of the twentieth 
century are confidently calling back to the half-seers of the 
eighteenth, 'No ! not the independence, but the dependence of 
individuals is the first law of life V " 

The illustrations and comments with which Halleck sup- 
ported these abstract statements evidently did their work. 
There was no sign of wandering attention. The audience 
seemed to have followed the line of thought, and to be ready 
for the next step in the argument. 

"There are almost as many theories about what Jesus 
meant by the phrase 'the Kingdom' as there are first-hand stu- 
dents of the New Testament. It is not necessary to catalogue 
them, nor to decide between them, in order to be sure of 
enough of the substance of his teaching for our present pur- 
pose. 

"The gist of the whole matter is this. There is no hope of 
putting human affairs on a secure and satisfactory basis, 
until we transfer the meridian line of all social calculation 
from our own selves to a moral order that is bigger than our 
special interests. 

"It makes comparatively little difference whether we mis- 
take our higher or our lower interests for the axis on which 
our world turns. 

"We may be just as fatally at odds with the final law of 
life if we suppose the centre of things is a plan for our soul's 
salvation, as we are if we assume that the moral fulcrum is a 
scheme of individual rights in economic competition. 

"We are bound to see things in a blur, and to tangle our- 
selves in moral confusion, in the degree that our theory and 
our practice presuppose that our selfish appraisal of our pri- 
vate rights can settle our relation to our fellow men. 

"Magnify our inner life, and our individual worth, how we 
will — and we cannot overestimate them if the other factor at 
the same time gets its ratio of value — at our largest and our 
best, with all that we have and all that we are, each of us is 
merely an infinitesimal subject in a sovereign moral order. 

"The elements of value are in ourselves, but the proportions 
of our values, and their claims to precedence, and the measure 
of influence they may justly exert upon the destinies of other 

79 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROPHET 



men, are settled at last not by our separate standards, but by 
the supreme moral constitution. 

"This final arbiter rates the individual, without preference 
or prejudice, on his merits as a factor in the well-working of 
the whole. 

"Whether we arrive at this principle through the traditions 
of religion, or through direct perception, or through the find- 
ings of social science, it is the only secure foundation for 
society. 

"If private interests may constitute petty sovereignties, each 
a law unto itself, there is no peace for the world till some in- 
terest shall destroy or subdue all the rest. 

"If there is a sovereign order, then peace can assume its 
place in human affairs only through surrender of sovereignty 
by separate interests, and acceptance of allegiance to the su- 
preme interest of the whole. 

"Whether we call this foundation principle of human 
society, natural law, or the world order, or the welfare of all, 
or essential justice, or the Kingdom of God ; whether we think 
of it in naturalistic, or legalistic, or religious forms, our pres- 
ent insight into moral relations affords us no further appeal. 

"We have our choice between an arbitrary social world, 
and society progressively conforming to verified moral values. 
In that direction lies anarchy. In this direction is progress. 

"We have our choice between taking our risks fighting for 
our chances in an arbitrary world, and working out our com- 
mon salvation in a rational world. 

"The one alternative is destructive and costly to the aver- 
age man. The other is constructive, and insures to the aver- 
age man the largest rate of return for his investment in life. 

"We shall live in a world of disorder, of accident, of cross 
purposes, with a ruinous rate of frustration and disappoint- 
ment, until our lives are federated around a common centre, 
and controlled by a common principle pervasive enough to 
organize all our clashing interests into mutual support. 

"Allowing then for the necessary inaccuracy of great gen- 
eralizations popularized in proverbial form, Jesus actually 
anticipated the soberest results of modern social science when 
he said 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteous- 
ness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' " 

80 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROPHET 



A few faces in the congregation gave signs of foreseeing 
the application of this analysis to the specific issue. Others 
indicated appreciation of the high plane on which the ques- 
tion was evidently to be considered, with curiosity whether 
a connection could be found between these generalities and 
the pending problem. The majority seemed to understand 
what had been said, but with a passive sort of intelligence 
which was docile rather than critical. Halleck made a men- 
tal note that he was calling on his hearers for a wider survey 
than usual, but he felt that he was driving down some stakes 
that would be permanent points of departure. His pause was 
a signal for a moment's recess of attention, and his manner 
when he resumed gave notice of transition to a different phase 
of the subject. 

"For practical purposes, the constitutional law of society, 
or the Kingdom of God, has always meant, and always must 
mean, the largest conception that can be entertained, in a 
given situation, of the entire community of interests which 
fixes the proportional rating of all contending special in- 
terests. 

"It would be easy, if time allowed, to recite historical illus- 
trations of this fact. They range from primitive tribal con- 
ditions, in which that group survives and prospers which ex- 
hibits the highest degree of individual subordination to group 
interests, up to the standards of civilization, which set the 
limits within which stronger peoples may dictate to weaker 
neighbors. The record is so clear on this point, however, 
that we may merely mention it, and go on to its bearings upon 
our own case. 

"Human knowledge of social justice, or of the Kingdom of 
God, is like the traveller's conception of the height of a moun- 
tain. It can be filled out only by practical experiment with 
the facts. 

"For us, social justice, or the Kingdom of God, must be 
the largest sweep of human interests that we can bring into 
view, arranged in accordance with the truest scale of compar- 
ative values that we can understand. 

"For you and me, social justice, or the Kingdom of God, 
cannot mean less than a fair field and an impartial judgment 
for every sort of human interest that is struggling for recog- 
nition today. The Kingdom of God has no place for pref- 

81 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROPHET 



erence or concession to one interest more than another, ex- 
cept on valid evidence that progressing human well-being 
requires stimulus of this interest and restraint of that. 

" 'Pure religion and undefiled' does not mean today 'to 
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.' That is 
common decency. It is matter of course. We have out- 
grown it as an ideal. There is harder work for religion to do 
now than that. Pure religion means to take the next steps 
toward realizing the Kingdom of God. Pure religion means 
to adopt into our conception of human obligation the most 
enlightened standard of moral action that we can discover. 
Pure religion means to quit taking refuge behind social con- 
ventionalities that exempt our interests from submitting to 
re-examination of their title. Pure religion means to unite 
in a perpetual peace congress with our fellow men, for inquest 
into the operations of established institutions. Pure religion 
means resolution to diminish the ill-workings of these insti- 
tutions when they work ill, and to protect their well-working 
when they work well ; to judge between the claims of vested 
rights and protested rights ; to devise means of reducing to a 
minimum the obstructive possibilities of selfishness, and to 
accelerate every notion toward harmonized human progress. 

"A keen newspaper man would find in a twentieth century 
version of this old speech of Jesus a first page 'story' for to- 
morrow's paper. It goes to the roots of our modern troubles, 
while most of the agitators and reformers are merely spraying 
some of the twigs. 

"In a word, if we want the benefits of religion we must 
first get religion. If we are bound to let our world stay as 
crude and blind and bad as it is, we must take the conse- 
quences, and go on distributing the losses by insuring our- 
selves as well as we may against the extra-hazardous risk of 
living in such a world. To reduce the risk we must remove 
the hazards. 

"There was never in the world before such a volume of 
demand for richer life, better secured, more widely distrib- 
uted. It is not merely a demand for more fleshpots. It is 
also an honest cry for completer living. There is one way to 
satisfy the demand, and one only. Lift life to the next 
higher moral plane. Accept life as a common enterprise. 
Stop treating it as a handicap race. Retire your obsolete 
morality. Ratify the next clause in the constitution of the 

82 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROPHET 



Kingdom of God, and you will presently begin to transform 
the waste of this half-civilized human struggle into the divi- 
dends of a loftier righteousness !" 

Halleck's style seldom passed from the conversational to 
the declamatory. In the exceptional cases there was no pre- 
mediated effort for dramatic effect, but genuine feeling was 
allowed to utter itself without restraint. In the last few 
minutes Halleck had felt the freedom and the joy of a seer 
arriving within sight of a prospect unfamiliar to most men. 
The distinctness of the vision strengthened his faith. His 
voice responded to the impulse and spurred the audience like 
a bugle sounding the charge. After stopping long enough 
to avoid an abrupt contrast, he resumed the argument in his 
usual manner. 

"We are tempted to consume such large outlooks as lux- 
uries. We shirk our duty unless we capitalize them as in- 
vestments. Our business is to bring the particular case that 
is nearest to our thoughts into focus within this wide per- 
spective. 

"From the view point which we have just considered, 
many debatable aspects of every special social situation are 
visible. We are likely to have occasion to deal with a long 
list of them before we hear the last of our present difficulties. 
We shall have done enough for one Sunday, if we make 
practical application of the principle before us in a single 
phase of its bearing upon our problem. 

"Until we have accomplished the ascent to the next higher 
level of life, the Kingdom of God, as a goal to be reached, 
and as an obligation to be accepted, will mean, in a word, 
human struggle transformed into a system of mutual aid. 

"If we want to take this principle out of religious terms, 
and give it a more commonplace phrasing, we may put the 
facts in this way : — Life is misunderstood if it is thought of 
as a collection of parallel interests which are at their best 
when they let one another alone. Life is a system of re- 
ciprocating interests. They cannot avoid the alternative of 
obstructing or promoting one another. The total output 
of life will be increased in quantity and improved in quality 
in the degree in which we learn how to advance from struggle 

83 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PROPHET 



between interests, and defeat and destruction of one interest 
by another, to concurrence and correlation of interests. 

"We claim to have risen above the rule of force, and to 
have adopted the rule of reason; but we are marking time 
before the next great step in human progress. As a rule 
every interest persists in using against all rival interests the 
method of force instead of the method of reason. 

"Let us look our present local situation frankly in the face. 
It sets our special task in promoting social welfare, or the 
Kingdom of God. At the same time it is merely one typical 
case of the universal problem of modern society. 

"The men who earn wages, and the men who pay wages, 
are trying to get into position to defeat each other in a trial 
of strength. 

"Both sides will be recruited from this congregation. 

"Both sides will convince themselves with plausible pleas 
that they are contending for the right. 

"Both sides will in reality throw their whole weight against 
the kind of right that is due for recognition in the modern 
world; and both will wage the fierce fight of conscientious 
stupidity — for what? Why the net outcome of your fight 
will be simply that you will insure another lease of life to 
the miserable regime of wrong! 

"During one of our recent national campaigns, representa- 
tives of the different parties explained briefly, in one of the 
leading weekly papers, the essence of their respective plat- 
forms. The presidential nominee of one of the labor parties 
made a statement which at least proved that his party was 
endowed with its share of our common human nature. The 
argument amounted to these three claims : — 'First, it is dan- 
gerous to the liberty of any class to be legislated for by a 
class whose interests are antagonistic. Second, the capital- 
ists are now legislating for the laborers. Third, the labor 
party proposes to seize political power and legislate for the 
capitalists. ' 

"There you have it! It is not the wage earner alone. 
With different degrees of tact in masking our egotism we are 
all trying to win on the platform: — 'It is wrong for you to 
regulate me, but it is right for me to regulate you !' We are 
all fighting for this policy. And we wonder that the world 
is no (more prosperous and happy, while such an enlightened 
and beneficent conception of life prevails! 

84 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PROPHET 



"Labor and capital do not devise means of correcting their 
partisan claims by some non-partisan standard. They do 
not ask, 'How do our demands as separate interests look 
when judged, not from our special point of view, but from 
the standpoint of the whole civilization in which they are 
incidents?' Each ignores the right of the other to modify 
a one-sided conception of rights. Each party isolates itself, 
and magnifies its separate importance, and declares, in de- 
fiance of all the world 'These are our rights ! These we want ! 
These we will have !' 

"The most inconsistent modern immorality is provin- 
cialism. 

"Never have rivals, interests, competitors, classes, had such 
manifold effects upon one another's destinies. 

"Never was it so evident that equity must be a composite 
judgment, in which conflicting claims are impartially rep- 
resented. 

"The peculiar social task of our era is to install the mor- 
ality of legislating and regulating not for one another but 
with one another." 

Halleck had none of the zealotry which flatters itself that 
the world's work is done when a truth is told. He was ad- 
dicted neither to belittling his own division of labor nor to 
over-sanguine hopes of visible results. While he was putting 
all his resources into a restatement of the argument, and an 
appeal for recognition of the moral standard it presented, 
he was aware of a certain indifference as to whether or not any 
of his hearers ever gave proof of having taken his words to 
heart. He had at all events clarified his own mind. He 
had satisfied himself both of social needs and of social ten- 
dencies. He had crystallized his liquid conception of the 
radical element in the moral problem, and he had reassured 
himself of the mark toward which his own efforts must con- 
verge. Whether these particular hearers carried the truth 
to application or not, he had fortified his own faith that the 
truth would sometime do its perfect work. 



85 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



VI 

THE PHILANTHROPIST 

"No one remarked that prevention before the accident, or 
quick action afterwards, would have been worth more 
than the cure likely to be effected at this late day." 



SUNDAY noon at David Lyon's house would remind a New 
Englander in his sixties or seventies of Thanksgiving cel- 
ebrations in his youth. Religion and domesticity and hos- 
pitality joined in a genial warmth that may not have marked 
the summit of social attainment, but it surely presented one 
of the fine types of life. 

Sunday was Mr. Lyon's only home day. He wanted his 
whole family around him, and as many intimate friends be- 
side as the size of his dining room would permit. The num- 
ber this time was smaller than usual, for it included only the 
seven persons whom Mr. Lyon claimed as the members of his 
immediate household. Within this group there was greater 
intimacy and freedom, but no more genuine good feeling 
than a guest always recognized under David Lyon's roof. 

The Lyon homestead might have ranked as palatial when 
it was built. It was no longer among the more pretentious 
residences of the city. It was designed for domestic comfort, 
rather than for display or elaborate entertainment. A stand- 
ard of utility that was commonplace in kind, but liberal in 
scale, had evidently dictated the specifications. 

The appointments indicated wealth without an insistent 
standard of taste. Except in the case of furniture bought by 
the set, it would have been difficult to assign a sufficient artistic 
reason for the presence of any two articles of use or ornament 
in the same room. The furnishings seemed to have been 
selected on their separate merits, and to have been assembled 
without the aid of esthetic principles that could have been 
definitely expressed. Although there were no glaring dishar- 
monies, the passive incongruity would have produced an ef- 
fect upon a sensitive taste very much like that of a rich and 
benevolent person without manners. 

Mr. and Mrs. Lyon were choice specimens of a type of 
arrested development especially frequent among Americans. 

89 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



Their material prosperity had overtaxed their imagination. 
Their personal expenditures had by no means increased in 
the ratio of Mr. Lyon's gain of income, but the changes in 
their demands upon life were much more conspicuous in 
quantity than in quality. While Mr. Lyon's business had 
been a large factor in creating the new industrial era in the 
United States ; while he was commercially not only a product 
but a producer of the times ; his ideas of the relations between 
person and person showed only the faintest perception of the 
changes that had occurred in social conditions. 

Both Mr. and Mrs. Lyon had been faithfully schooled in 
the elementary principles of integrity with equals and charity 
towards inferiors. Their social conceptions dated from the 
period when there was no dispute that industry, and honesty, 
and thrift, and fair dealing were infallible means of success 
for all, because all were supposed to have equal opportunity 
to practice these virtues. Their personal observance of the 
code which they had learned in childhood was not from fear, 
but from reverence and love. They had high-minded pleas- 
ure in the duties which their sense of honor prescribed. 

If they had been told that the world had been transformed 
since the morality which they inherited had taken shape, they 
would have said that it could not possibly have been a change 
which made wrong right or right wrong. With them this 
would not have been a quibble, but to their best knowledge 
and belief a good and sufficient answer to all suggestions that 
obligation might be made more liberal or more exacting. If 
it had still been urged that the difference between people of 
a century or two ago, and modern men, was like the contrast 
between a population of primitive farmers, each peaceably 
providing for his own wants, with little dependence upon the 
rest, and the same population organized as: an army to repel 
invasion, each dependent upon all the others for hope of life 
and happiness ; they would have been honestly unable to see 
any propriety in the comparison. The world had grown more 
complex, of course. There were greater inequalities. But 
these simply corresponded to actual differences in diligence 
and prudence. They allowed for a certain modicum of mys- 
terious misfortune, but they were convinced that, with this ex- 
ception, rewards and merits on the whole corresponded, as 
they always had and as they always must. 

90 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



They were equally candid in this view, and they held it 
with equal firmness, but there was an obtrusive contrast be- 
tween the two sorts of evidence on which their faith reposed. 
Mr. Lyon frankly claimed that he had built up his fortune 
by his own efforts, without help from anybody. His success 
seemed to him merely a case of Providence protecting its 
credit. No one who knew him questioned his exceptional 
ability ; few doubted that he had earned his success ; and only 
here and there an extremist challenged his right to all he had. 

Measured by the same standard, his wife was entitled to 
the rewards of fidelity in a comparatively humble position; 
but a thousand women whose personal desert quite equalled 
hers, still earned merely the modest wages of employments 
like that which she resigned to become the second Mrs. Lyon. 
Whether their rate of return for service or hers was in pro- 
portion to merit, the excess or deficit in the other case was 
sufficient to confirm the incredulous in distrust of the theory. 

The work of the future Mrs. Lyon as head of a sub-depart- 
ment in one of the large down-town stores had been highly 
valued by her employers, and it was altogether to her credit 
until, after her marriage, she fell into the bathos of being 
ashamed of her former occupation. Her aggressive anxiety 
to make people forget it, not only kept the fact fresh in their 
memory, but it sharpened criticism of other traits that might 
have been overlooked. If she had shown the genuine pride 
in having earned her living as a business woman that her 
husband did in his advance from small beginnings, her other 
qualities might have conquered most of the doubts about 
her fitness for her present position. She really had all the 
homely virtues except indomitable simplicity. She would 
have been a model wife for a man whose income was not large 
enough to intoxicate her sense of importance. Promoted sud- 
denly to opportunity for which she was untrained and unpre- 
pared, she remained true to her previous convictions, but she 
deplorably failed to bring consistent order and proportion 
into the confusion of values among which her choices now 
had to be made. 

Her only child, Chester, more generally known as "Buck," 
now eighteen years old, was already cited rather freely as the 
legitimate result of Mrs. Lyon's limitations. His father had 
been too much preoccupied to concern himself directly with 
the bov's education. Left entirelv to maternal discretion, 

91 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



he had asserted his independence almost from the cradle, and 
had never learned the rudiments of respect for any authority 
but his own will. He had rapidly lengthened the radius of 
his freedom by artful use of the endless chain "all the fel- 
lows/' and "everybody." The cumulative effect of assuming 
the sanction of all for what was approved by none, plainly 
marked the bunch chiefly of rich men's sons in which Buck 
both led and followed. Because the parents of each lacked in- 
dependence to obey their better judgment, their combined 
timidity amounted to a conspiracy to defeat their unorgan- 
ized scruples. 

The fallacy and the pathos of Mrs. Lyon's whole misman- 
agement of her son lay in allowing him to presume upon the 
external results of his father's success, instead of grounding 
him in the elements of purpose and habit which had made 
the success possible. By permitting Buck to grow up without 
the discipline of responsibility, Mrs. Lyon had inverted the 
process of heredity, and although she was still fondly unsus- 
picious, he was already far advanced along lines of moral 
reversion. 

Mr. Lyon's other two children had welcomed his second 
marriage. Logan was already in college, and Edith in an 
eastern preparatory school. They had known Miss Williams 
as Secretary of the Sunday School, and as a prominent worker 
in other church organizations, and the choice seemed to them 
ideal. Edith was four years younger than Logan, and after 
her graduation at Vassar she had studied music two years in 
Europe. With the exception of the year before her marriage, 
she had been at home only during parts of her vacations, and 
as her brother was absent still more, their relations to their 
stepmother had quite easily adjusted themselves on a cousinly 
basis. 

Edgerly was the brother of Edith Lyon's college chum. 
He had been an instructor three or four years at Yale, and 
was in Berlin getting ready for his first semester, when the 
party containing the two girls arrived. During the two fol- 
lowing years, he found it convenient to act as their courier in 
vacations, and soon after Edith's return the engagement was 
announced. They were married a year later, after Edgerly 
had taken his Doctor's degree in Berlin. Meanwhile he had 
been advanced to a higher position at Yale, and they had 

92 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



lived in New Haven until Edgerly accepted the call to 
Chicago. 

Mr. Lyon had not yet returned from church, and the sixth 
member of the group in the library was evidently the focus 
of attention. Hester Kinzie was hardly midway in her twen- 
ties, but the manner of the others toward her was an uncer- 
tain compromise between tolerance of youthfulness and def- 
erence to seniority. A casual glance would have gathered the 
impression that here was a girl who had herself excellently 
well in hand. Continued inspection would bring into relief 
the fine poise; the secure self-possession, with entire efface- 
ment of self -consciousness ; the rare combination of repose 
with vigilant attention and stimulating sympathy. Perhaps 
more notable still was her economy of physical effort. She 
ran the gamut of emotion from grave to gay, in harmony 
with the others, but all her effects were produced with a ret- 
icence of tone, of gesture, of expression, that was almost 
telepathic. 

One might have written down all these observations with- 
out having thought to propose that first question in the cate- 
chism of womanhood, was she beautiful? More than this, one 
might have neglected to review the evidence on the subject 
without counting the oversight an important omission. Na- 
ture might or might not have endowed her with beauty. Cul- 
ture had certainly enriched her with charms that were more 
subtly attractive. 

Hester Kinzie was the daughter of Mr. Lyon's lifelong 
friend, one of the original organizers of the Avery Company. 
She did not remember her mother, but from her earliest rec- 
ollection she had been her father's companion. He had re- 
mained until his death a nominal member of the board of di- 
rectors of the company, but had retired from active business 
shortly after the death of his wife. He was a graduate of 
Williams College, and though he had rapidly accumulated a 
large fortune, he often said that if nature intended him for 
money-making Mark Hopkins had vetoed the arrangement. 
He had a scholar's tastes, with discernment enough to be 
aware that he lacked the modern scholar's equipment. But 
he was not equally limited in his fitness to teach. From the 
time that he gave up business he devoted himself to his daugh- 
ter's education. They travelled constantly, and studied to- 
gether the subjects which he approved, with the exception of 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



the languages. He found that she could acquire them so 
readily that it would be an injustice to hamper her by keeping 
to the methods which he found necessary for himself. 

As long as she could remember, both Hester and her father 
had spoken of Mr. Lyon as their guardian. He had always 
held Mr. Kinzie's proxies for all purposes that required them, 
and he was the executor of his friend's estate. 

Hester had not visited Chicago since her father died, a lit- 
tle more than a year before. Logan Lyon had always regarded 
her as a very entertaining child. He had romped with her, and 
hectored her, and always called her "Gypsy," without taking 
notice that the girl gave promise of becoming a rarely notable 
woman. The promise had not been so visibly in the way of 
fulfillment when he last saw her, but he was now aware that 
a transformation had occurred, though he did not at once 
realize its extent. 

Several years earlier, when Edgerly first saw Hester, his 
wife had asked his impression of her. At first he tried to get 
off with the reply that youthful prodigies always appealed to 
his pity. After further urging he admitted that her varie- 
gated hues would be fascinating if they were not uncanny. 
Finding that his wife would not be satisfied until he spoke 
with some show of seriousness, he said that he would not ven- 
ture to label Hester without further study ; but at present she 
appeared to be a rather volatile compound of Puritan tradi- 
tion, Parisian taste, German mental affinity, and Salvation 
Army practice. Perhaps the only change that he had since 
seen reason to make in the analysis was substitution of the 
term stable for volatile. 

When Mr. Lyon came in, it was like the appearance of 
Santa Claus clean shaven. He had been to the West Side to 
visit a family in trouble, and he seemed to be enjoying some 
of the superior happiness of giving. 

Dinner had been waiting, and was at once announced. Mr. 
Lyon asked the blessing with phrase and fervor that were 
rather rare survivals from another generation. Then he be- 
gan at once to tell of the errand from which he had just 
returned. 

The Charity Organization Society had discovered a man 
and his wife entirely destitute, and so sick that neither could 
help the other. In tracing their record it was found that the 
man had been for fifteen years a, skilled laborer in the employ 

94 



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THE PHILANTHROPIST 



of the Avery Company. An accident, caused by the careless- 
ness or incompetence of another workman, had injured him 
so severely that when he recovered he was no longer capable 
of filling his former place, and nothing else was offered him 
by his employers. When he was sent to the Company's hos- 
pital, he had to sign a release of all claims against the Com- 
pany. For half a dozen years both he and his wife had kept 
busy at any work they could find, and so far as the neigh- 
bors knew they had not suffered, until sickness had made 
them helpless. 

Mr. Lyon told how he had verified the story of the day 
before, and had sent a visiting nurse with instructions to pro- 
vide everything immediately needed by the couple. After 
inspecting their surroundings himself, he had made arrange- 
ments to move them to the Presbyterian Hospital. The 
physician whom the nurse called had assured him that proper 
nourishment for a few weeks was the chief element in the 
treatment indicated to restore their normal condition. 

No one remarked that prevention before the accident, or 
quick action afterwards, would have been worth more than 
the cure likely to be effected at this late day. The thought 
may have been prompted, and possibly it recurred in veiled 
form a few moments later. 

Mr. Lyon assumed that the couple were to be put on their 
feet again, both physically and industrially. Mrs. Lyon was 
no less eager than he to work out ways and means forthwith, 
and they pursued the subject so intently that at last Mrs. 
Edgerly interposed the query if it would not be the regular 
procedure to appoint a chairman and secretary and take 
stenographic minutes. 

The hint was received with a sigh of relief by all, not ex- 
cepting Mr. and Mrs. Lyon. Logan quickly followed it up 
with a challenge to Hester. Even as a child her ideas had 
always amused him, but he was beginning to take notice that 
she had a point of view which might yield something more 
than diversion. He tried to adopt his customary tone, but in 
spite of himself respectful qualification tempered former con- 
descension, as he remarked : — "I was wondering, Miss Gypsy, 
whether we should get some new readings of our palms this 
trip/' 

Without turning her eyes from the figure she w T as exam- 
ining in the table-cloth, Hester answered musingly: — "Oh 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



no; alles bleibt beim Alten. All Chicago is still divided into 
three classes; the machine-tenders, the want-to-be-machine- 
tenders, and the escaped- from-being-machine tenders." 

"You credit us then with a few escapes?" returned Lyon. 

" 'Credit' is your own version," answered Hester, fixing on 
him a comical expression of surprise. "I should say it is like 
the canary's escape from the cage. The first two classes are 
in the way of salvation, thanks to having their wants. The 
others are more lost than before, because they don't know 
what they want." 

"Yet some of the canaries enjoy their freedom," ventured 
Mrs. Lyon. 

"Yes, in their fluttering little fashion," continued Hester, 
as though dropping again into meditation, "but on the whole 
isn't enjoyment much less in evidence than bewilderment?" 

Mrs. Edgerly was sure Hester was turning over in her mind 
something worth hearing, if she could be provoked to utter it. 
To furnish a random stimulus she interposed, with a mild af- 
fectation of anxiety: — "Promise me, Hester, that you will 
prepare our minds gradually, before you shake our republican 
dust from your feet to transfer your allegiance to an effete 
monarchy." 

The only sign that Hester was taking up the aggressive 
might have been found in the somewhat irrelevant abrupt- 
ness of her answer: "Isn't modern royalty more democratic 
than modern riches?" 

"Does the key go with the cipher?" inquired Mr. Lyon in- 
dulgently. 

"It's easier than the prospectus of Esperanto," chirped Hes- 
ter, turning upon him a curiously confidential expression, 
which left everybody uncertain whether she was in earnest 
or simply preparing to tease her guardian. "Isn't the king 
today the chief worker in the settlement? Isn't he a trained 
specialist in public service? Isn't he the most representative 
citizen? Isn't he a sort of digest of the life of the people? 
Isn't he not only the symbol of the State, but the most active 
unifying agent? Isn't the modern rich man his opposite at 
all points? Doesn't he work people instead of working with 
them? Does he soil his hands with public service? Isn't he 
an exception, instead of a specimen? Doesn't he make him- 
self a spectator, instead of taking his part as a plain man ? On 

96 



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the whole, doesn't he do more to divide society than to unite 
it?" 

"Really, Miss Gypsy," groaned Logan, with a fair imita- 
tion of dejection, "this is too much of a disappointment. You 
are billed to be original or nothing. These recitations out of 
the Anarchists' Handbook will ruin your reputation." 

Still looking at the father, as though wishing to confine 
her attention to him, Hester answered parenthetically, "Re- 
member, Logan, you didn't ask me for news, but merely to 
read your palms. A real seeress must be truthful though tire- 
some." 

Mrs. Lyon never had toleration for flippancy on such a 
subject. Irreverence at this point seemed to her to threaten 
the gold of the altar. Following so close upon the evidence 
to the contrary, in the plans they had just discussed, these re- 
flections seemed to her especially unkind. She usually 
avoided disagreement with Hester. She had a dread of mis- 
taking play for earnest, and her distrust of her own sense of 
humor perhaps made her interpret the obvious in Hester as 
mystery. This time, however, although she suspected that 
her reply left much to be desired, both as to novelty and con- 
clusiveness, she took the risk, before any one else could 
answer. 

"But, Hester, you forget the millions of dollars given to 
charity in the United States every year." 

"I didn't forget them, Aunt Jenny," Hester began sooth- 
ingly. "Some of the blessedest dollars in the world are among 
them." Then returning to the more impersonal aspects of 
the subject : — "Some of them too are the same snobocratic dol- 
lars I had in mind. Their image and superscription make 
me wonder if modern royalty isn't more human than mod- 
ern riches. We sit on our thrones and command the Grand 
Vizier of the Bank Account to scatter largesses, but Ahasuerus 
and all his ancient kind did that. It's not modern at all. 
While the up-to-date king devotes his life to finding out what 
his people need, and working harder than any of them to get 
it, aren't we the American rich spending our money like 
nabobs for anyone we can patronize, but do we any more make 
common cause with people outside our financial class than we 
take our cook into our box the first night of the opera?" 

Edgerly was beginning to suspect that Hester was much 
deeper than an impressionist; and he was highly edified by 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



the effect of her heresy on both Mr. and Mrs. Lyon. For men- 
tal and physical cures alike however, he believed in ninety- 
nine parts nature to one of medicine. At the present moment 
he judged that the dose already administered might be 
enough for a single treatment, and that a diversion might be 
in the line of good policy as well as good fellowship. With 
a glance at Mrs. Lyon, for her permission to interrupt the ar- 
gument, he volunteered his mediation. 

"It has occurred to me, Miss Kinzie, that Logan got his 
references mixed. It sounds more like plagiarism from this 
morning's sermon." 

Edgerly was not content to let his father-in-law drop out 
of the conversation. Few families more rigidly observed the 
taboo of "shop" in the household. From the table talk a 
guest would seldom be able to place Mr. Lyon ; but the infer- 
ence would almost always be drawn that philanthropy was 
his chief occupation. Edgerly reckoned that reference to 
Halleck's line of thought was an approach to forbidden 
ground, and that it would call for a defensive movement. 
Mr. Lyon did not take alarm, however, until Hester had 
tripped blithely across the danger line. She more than half 
guessed what was in Edgerly's mind. She had been privileged 
from childhood as an enfant terrible toward her guardian, and 
since she had arrived at ideas of her own she had often turned 
the role to serious account. With the carelessness of an 
ingenue exchanging banter she smiled back upon Edgerly : — 

"Mr. Halleok and I have merely been reading the same 
palms. After one of his climaxes I retired into a reverie, and 
when I returned I fancied he had been saying, 'David Lyon, 
you are one of the best men in the world, but the social prob- 
lem is how to get you into moral relations with your help!" 

To do both Mr. and Mrs. Lyon justice, their imagination 
was honestly lost in the attempt to put a workable meaning 
into Halleck's ideas. The only direction along which they 
could see any hope of industrial betterment, was through 
growth of intelligence in laborers that would show them the 
necessity of trusting the superior wisdom of employers. To 
their minds the wage system was a part of the order of nature 
no less than the changes of seasons. The application to Mr. 
Lyon in particular seemed so extravagant that both preferred 
to take it as a facetious way of retreating from the charge upon 
wealth in general. 

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THE PHILANTHROPIST 



Mr. Lyon's patience with Hester's escapades of opinion was 
very much like the Kaiser's sufferance of his daughter's lib- 
erties with imperial dignity. They did not affect him as 
social symptoms, but merely as signs of girlish detachment 
from the real world. That Halleck should put arguments into 
the mouths of feministic theorists was another matter ; yet this 
was a subject for the office, not for the family. To avoid the 
trap, he chose to treat Hester's allusion playfully. 

"I heard Mr. Kissinger say yesterday that one of the young 
women in the office wants leave of absence for two months, to 
help her sister get ready to be married. I will recommend 
you for the position, Hester, and you can see what an ogre I 
am at close quarters." 

"Oh, I've no doubt you'd be so nice to me that I should 
quite forget the personal and the business duality. But suppose 
I should join the Office Girls' Protective Union. Wouldn't 
you say I was trying to reverse divine foreordination, and 
wouldn't you boycott me?" 

"Of course, if you should conspire against me. I should 
have to defend myself." 

"Would my Office Girls' Union be more of a conspiracy 
against you, than your corporation laws, and your community 
of interests among capitalists would against me?" 

"I will answer allegorically, Hester. Suppose the blades of 
corn in some farmer's field should form a union next Spring 
to outwit the climate. Suppose they agreed to grow in spite 
of drought when rain was needed, and to fill out fuller ears 
than usual even if rain fell all the time that sunshine was 
wanted. What would you think of the prospects of the union 
against the climate?" 

"They would strike me as a rather forlorn hope, Uncle 
David, but I wish you would explain the allegory. The 
blades of corn represent ?" 

"Why the members of your union, with your easy supe- 
riority to the laws of business." 

"And the climate?" 

"The climate stands for business of course, and the blades 
of corn must conform to it." 

"You didn't mean to imply that the employers are the 
climate?" 

"The employers understand the climate, and the unions 
do not." 



99 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 



"I see. That makes the allegory very striking. If I had 
a masculine mind, I suppose I should be convinced forever, 
Uncle David; but as I haven't, I'm foolish enough to im- 
agine that something may still be said for the unions. Would 
you mind if I try my hand at an allegory?" 

A gentle murmur of encouragement circled the table, and 
Hester proceeded: — 

"One fine Spring morning, the blades of corn in a small 
patch, in one corner of the field, put their heads together and 
decided to form a syndicate to control irrigation. They said 
to one another, 'We know what we want, and the rest of the 
field doesn't know what it wants. All these hills of corn can't 
prosper of course. There isn't material enough to go around. 
We must make things come our way. We will keep our- 
selves well watered. We will wash plenty of soil from the rest 
of the field, if necessary, to cover our roots, but any way we 
will get rich and fat.' Would it be so awfully unreasonable, 
Uncle David, for the rest of the field to form a union, while 
the few hills were organizing their syndicate?" 

The air of artless innocence with which Hester propounded 
the dilemma was too much for the gravity even of Mr. and 
Mrs. Lyon. Buck had been inwardly voting the whole talk 
an infernal bore, but the humor of the last turn drew him 
into the general outburst of hilarity. Mr. Lyon declared that 
he felt like sending a large check at once to the firemen's 
fund, in gratitude for the narrow escape from letting such a 
pyromaniac into his office. Logan said it merely went to 
show our need of an underground route to Siberia; and Ed- 
gerly submitted that they had all guessed wrong, and these 
were advance sheets from a new Communist Manifesto. 

Hester toyed demurely with her liqueur glass, and reflected 
that a little well placed irony now and then might help the 
world move on as much as many a ponderous argument. 

While the others were returning to the library, Buck took 
the opportunity to extricate himself, with the notification to 
his mother, "I won't be home very early. Tom and I are 
going to take two of the girls on an auto ride." 



100 



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THE SAFE AND SANE 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



VII 
THE SAFE AND SANE 

"The real issue is this : — How do you know that your better 
judgment hasn't usurped more authority than it is entitled 
to as a dictator to men of poorer judgment?" 



AT the head of the long table in the directors' room, the 
President of the Company was dispatching his Monday 
morning's work. 

He might have been described as a twin of David Lyon, 
with reverse English upon every feature that made his brother 
lovable. In the lines of his face, as he rapidly disposed of 
one document after another, not a mark of a gentle emotion 
could be detected. He was following a routine, with no more 
betrayal of sentiment than is visible in a machine. After 
watching and listening for a half-hour to his curt comments 
to his secretary one might have said that his relentlessness 
in action resembled nothing so much as the strain of an ex- 
press engine making up time lost from the schedule. 

Yet this was David Lyon in his business character. Not 
dishonest, not dishonorable, not unscrupulous, he was simply 
unequivocal in his purpose, and unswerving, uncompromis- 
ing, inflexible in its pursuit. He accepted the working world 
as a scheme of order as unvarying and inevitable as the har- 
mony of the spheres. The Newtonian law of this system was, 
Capitalize all the wealth you can, and make it pay every 
penny of dividends it will produce. The general limitations 
of the system were defined by the statutes and the recognized 
rules of competition. Within these boundaries, success be- 
longed to the strongest force. 

No courts would have been needed to secure his observance 
of these restrictions to the letter, as he interpreted them. 
David Lyon's word was always as good as his contract. But 
honor, as he understood it, required rigid respect for the rules 
no more than pitiless use of the power of economic resources. 
It would be burying talents in the earth to permit embarrass- 
ment of business by sentimental considerations. His whole 
office philosophy was once packed into a remark to Edgerly : — 
"We can't go into battle without losing killed and wounded, 

105 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



but we must win the fight first and attend to them afterwards. 
When human sympathies obstruct the operation of business 
principles, they are as much out of place as lace curtains and 
bric-a-brac in a foundry." 

The difficult thing to understand was not the make-up of 
Mr. Lyon's two selves, but that he had never been disturbed 
by the contrast between them. He serenely accepted the benef- 
icent provision of nature which divided life into personal and 
impersonal parts, the former of which subsisted upon crumbs 
from the table of the latter. 

Perhaps more anomalous still, in a man of his type, was the 
fact that his partial suspension, in practice, of the funda- 
mental law "capitalize," was not in accordance with a definite 
formula. He was liberal in his expenditures, and generous 
in his gifts, but this did not alter the material fact. In prin- 
ciple, his personal life was not the master but the pensioner 
of his economic life, and he had never attempted to account 
for the ratio of withdrawal from possible capital, and transfer 
to bounty, which his business self permitted his personal self 
to administer. The truth was that these habitual concessions 
to the larger life represented ideas and influences which flatly 
contradicted his business theory. 

If he had been a philosopher, Mr. Lyon would have been 
a puzzle to himself. He would have seen that there was irre- 
pressible conflict between the two divisions of life which his 
working scheme created; and the conflict would have pre- 
sented itself to him as either comedy or tragedy. Whichever 
alternative he chose he would have had the curiosity to run 
down the contradiction, and to discover where the mistake 
was located which made his life revolve about two centres in- 
stead of one. Since he was not a philosopher, but merely a 
matter-of-fact man, he cared for none of these things; 
and instead of struggling to merge his antithetic selves into a 
unity, he held them apart, dividing his time between them, 
and turn for turn he was as conscientious about the program 
of the one as of the other. 

It was Mr. Lyon's habit to do his routine work in the direc- 
tors' room, in preference to his private office; and for two 
reasons. In the first place, there was the comfort and conve- 
nience of the larger space. This was the reason which he gave 
to others. In the second place, in the directors' room he could 
more easily imagine himself reaching out to touch every de- 

106 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



tail of the company's operations. He had more of the feel- 
ing of the Captain on the bridge, and of the Commander at 
staff -headquarters. He could fancy that all his heads of de- 
partments were present. This was the reason which he gave 
to himself. He would have been ashamed to confess it, for 
it was the one intrusion of sentiment which he had not barred 
from the premises. 

The customary order of business filled the first part of the 
forenoon, with no incident to show that anything unusual 
was in the air. According to the newspapers, the program 
predicted by Kissinger, and talked over by Mr. Lyon and 
Logan after dinner the day before, had been endorsed by the 
unions, and a delegation had been authorized to make formal 
presentation of the demands to the Company. No directors' 
meeting had been called, because the situation presented no 
problem that had not already been settled in principle ; unless 
it was the question whether an interview should be granted 
to a delegation submitting such an unthinkable proposition. 
As notification that an interview was desired had not been re- 
ceived, there was no hurry to decide how it should be treated. 

The special program of the day was to set in motion the 
offensive and defensive plans which had been worked out in 
anticipation of labor disturbance. Certain large orders for 
material had to be suspended ; customers were Avarned that the 
strike clause in their contracts was likely to become operative ; 
pending arrangements with the banks were to be closed, and 
in particular, the necessary steps had to be taken to put in 
readiness the campaign resources of the different associations 
that were pledged to maintain the employers' side of the 
fight. 

Until after business hours there had been hardly a moment 
of relief from hard work for the administrative officers. The 
lunch hour at their clubs had been nearly as busy as the floor 
of the Board of Trade during a break in the market. The di- 
rectors had been coming and going all day, and now, after the 
doors were closed, half a dozen of them were gathered around 
the long table to talk over the outlook at their leisure. 

At this moment Mr. Lyon would have been an ideal pose 
for Napoleon at Austerlitz, during the legendary twenty min- 
utes when he held his Marshals in leash while the allies were 
completing their false movement. He expected a terrific 

107 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



fight, but he had made his dispositions so carefully that he 
was absolutely confident. He was so pleased with the day's 
work that he had almost permitted his face to resume its 
human version. 

When the talk turned from what had been done, to the 
question of attitude toward the strikers' deputation, it was 
quickly evident that this transformation was premature. At 
mention of the defiance which was to be flung at the Com- 
pany, with the underlying provocation of implied contempt 
for business principles, Mr. Lyon's features instantly con- 
tracted into a hard, stern, almost fierce expression, that would 
have satisfied a rather rigorous conception of a headsman. 
Bringing both fists down heavily upon the table, he exclaimed, 
with a vehemence of which few knew him to be capable, "One 
thing is certain ! You will never catch me demeaning myself 
by a parley with these freebooters !" 

Most of the group represented primarily the bankers', 
rather than the employers' viewpoint, and they were inclined 
toward a more conciliatory policy. They argued that it was 
a mere matter of form anyway. They said it would do no 
hurt to be polite to these men. They thought it might even 
modify the animus of the struggle if the Company should 
avoid insolence in the beginning. 

Mr. Lyon came back at them savagely. "Is it insolence not 
to ask a man to walk into your parlor, when he advertises in 
advance that his errand is bribery or blackmail? Politeness 
has its place, and some of it might be judicious if we were just 
at present doing detectives' work. But I draw the line on 
politeness to the man that asks me to be his accomplice in 
crime. You propose to bandy words with an illegal conspir- 
acy. That would give these bandits the advantage of being 
treated as though they had a right to negotiate. It would give 
away our whole case if we should admit that they are entitled 
to a hearing. No! gentlemen. A burglar may break into 
my house at his own peril, but he will never get a chance to 
sit down before my fireplace and discuss terms of immunity. 
The scouts of these outlaws may wave their flag of truce till 
it rots. The only recognition they will ever get from David 
Lyon will be a volley !" 

Logan Lyon had been pacing slowly around the table, in 
the rear of the animated circle. None of the talk had es- 
caped him, but he had been thinking of Halleck, and Hester 

108 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



Kinzie ; and it was a relief from the grim tension of the day's 
schedule to look at it in the sort of colored light that he just 
at present associated with those persons. 

So far as Lyon was aware, his object in turning from the 
practical to what he regarded as the dilettantish, was amuse- 
ment, rather than anything more serious. It was a part of 
the "lighter touch" that he had mentioned to Barclay. It 
was a novel sensation to assume an attitude of aloofness, and 
to scrutinize business as an unbiased spectator. It gave him a 
feeling of self-possession something like the triumph of first 
ability to ride a bicycle without gripping the handle-bar. 
That the horizon which the Company made for itself was not 
the largest perspective in which it could be viewed without 
taking in a section of cloud-land, was almost as novel a reve- 
lation to Lyon as the fresh-air fund child's discovery that the 
world contains groves, and streams, and meadows, as well as 
pavements. 

The new mood was an inclination to be coltish. From 
pure mischief Lyon halted at the foot of the table, and for the 
first time broke into the conversation. 

"After all, Father, don't you think we're a little like the 
Quaker whose conscientious scruples against war couldn't 
keep him from firing just where the enemy stood?" 

The blank look on all the faces at the table told Lyon that 
he had not scored; and he acknowledged to himself that it 
was a rather wild shot. After his father had answered, in a 
slightly groping tone, that he didn't see the point, Logan 
tried again. 

"While you have been throwing bouquets at the Company 
for its long-headed preparations, I've been wondering how 
many of us had ever caught ourselves thinking that, win or 
lose, the whole campaign is a dodging of the issue." 

Probably no one present would have found anything new 
in such a reflection from a literary man, or a social agitator, 
but the source and the surroundings gave it the effect of a 
cannon-cracker. Any remark, however unexpected, that 
was to be taken literally in connection with a business propo- 
sition, would have met ready enough answer in that group; 
but this suggestion from Logan Lyon was a complete sur- 
prise. Every one was caught so off his guard that for several 
seconds only a confused gurgle came of the spasmodic at- 
tempts to articulate before thinking. The first to pull him- 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



self together enough to sense the spirit of the query was Evans, 
President of the Fidelity Trust Company, and nearest of the 
number to Logan's age. He could contribute only the insin- 
uation, "Does a hard day's work always rattle you, Lyon?" 

"On the contrary," Lyon answered jauntily, "as the day's 
work hasn't called on me to extend myself, I need the exer- 
cise of playing the devil's advocate." 

"If I was after that sort of exercise," joined in Snelling, 
of the Home National, "I should wait until my client had a 
case with at least a few technicalities in his favor." 

"You may not be aware, gentlemen," continued Lyon, with 
mock solemnity, and seemingly regardless of the comments, 
"that I am considering the idea of employing my leisure in 
writing a treatise on the vices of modern business." 

"On the principle that it takes a rogue to catch a rogue?" 
demanded Evans. 

"Exactly," followed Lyon, "the confessions of a converted 
capitalist." 

Nobody in the room could make out what Lyon was driv- 
ing at. Jokes were not good form in the Avery offices, even 
after hours. The presumption neither of jest nor of earnest 
offered a plausible clue. If Logan Lyon had not ranked as 
one of the keenest minds in Chicago, the group would have 
been disposed to think he was gibbering. As he was never 
known to talk without saying something, the topic of the day 
was dropped and the curiosity of the whole company turned 
to the enigma he had sprung. 

Semi-officially, rather than paternally, and as a caution 
against crossing the line of levity, Lyon Senior offered the 
tentative expostulation : — "It is to be presumed, Logan, that 
the confessions will be strictly individual rather than repre- 
sentative." 

"I had thought it would be a good plan to make them gen- 
eral, for the sake of seeing how my fellow sinners would plead 
to the indictment. For instance, the first chapter will begin : 
'Everybody knows that the patriarchalism of modern busi- 
ness is untenable.' " 

"You might save making a show of yourself, by assuming 
a verdict of not guilty on that count, and throwing it out of 
the record," retorted Evans. He was quicker than the others 
in tracking Lyon's moves, but he was an index of the temper 

no 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



of the rest. They all had the feeling that whatever Lyon 
meant it was entirely uncalled for, and perhaps seditious. 

Paying no attention to the disclaimer, Lyon continued : — 
"The second proposition will be: 'Even the interested parties 
now understand that the superstition of the divine right of 
kings was merely a primitive form of the illusion of the di- 
vine right of employers.' " 

By this time the President of the Company was really un- 
easy. Under any circumstances he would have regarded it as 
beneath the dignity of the head of the legal department to in- 
dulge in such extravagance. In a crisis like the present, it 
pointed either to deficient sense of the gravity of the situation, 
or to mental vagaries of which his son had never been sus- 
pected. Not in anger, but certainly in sorrow, he undertook 
to close the incident. "It strikes me, Logan," he interposed, 
with a manner that was an unsettled compound of gentleness 
and severity, "that it would be well to leave this sort of horse- 
play to the socialists, and confine ourselves to business." 

The young man's respect and affection for his father were 
too genuine to permit trifling either with his opinions or his 
feelings. With the other men Lyon might have continued on 
the same line indefinitely. For his father's sake, he saw that 
he must adopt a different tone. Still standing, with his hands 
in his pockets, at the end of the table, and now and then walk- 
ing a step or two in either direction, he took a new point of 
departure. 

"I'm neither an end-man nor a traitor. These things are 
strictly between us, and I'm not likely to let them clog the 
running gear. But, honestly, on the neutral ground between 
jobs, I would like immensely to find out how many of us are 
as satisfied as we think we are with the whole arrangement." 

"You don't propose to quit the business, and get a place to 
spin cobwebs down at the University?" This time it was Dex- 
ter, of the Ninth National. He had hardly spoken since Lyon 
disturbed the session. His face had been lowering, from the 
first remark, and the innovation seemed to irritate him more 
in its literal than in its facetious form. 

"What do you mean by 'the whole arrangement,' Logan?" 
asked his father. 

"I mean this: — The Avery Company, for instance, is 
a sample of the sort of thing that has grown up all over the 
world. Nobody saw in advance just what was coming, but 

in 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



new sources of motor power, new types of machinery, new 
markets, new legislation, new organization of economic 
forces, have gradually put into the hands of a few of us a new 
type of control over most of our partners in work. That is, 
the great majority of the people who make a modern industry 
have no more to say about the policy of the industry, or about 
business standards in general, than the Russian moujiks have 
about the constitution and laws of the empire. Our business, 
like every other, is necessarily a cooperative process. Each 
kind of labor, from thinking out the first steps in financing 
the company, to the least skilled work in getting out the raw 
material for our use, depends on every other kind. We 
couldn't get along without the work in the coal yards, any 
more than the coal yards could exist without the work in this 
office. But 'the whole arrangement' that I spoke of gives a 
handful of us relatively as much power over the great number 
as the Russian bureaucrats have over the nation at large. This 
is all very flattering to our vanity, and convenient for our side 
of the arrangement, but if we were called upon to justify it on 
grounds of good sportsmanship, we should have hard work to 
come off very proud of ourselves." 

"That's the talk of a quitter, Lyon," snarled Evans. "It's 
always good sportsmanship to take what comes to you under 
the rules, not to whine when you get the short end." 

"It's a great deal better sportsmanship," returned Lyon, 
"when everything has been coming our way, to be willing 
to consider whether the rules haven't artificially favored our 
style of play." 

"If you'd get the muddle out of your rhetoric," sneered 
Dexter, "There'd be no excuse left for your Miss Nancyism 
about sticking to business. Come in out of the moonlight, and 
you'll see that it isn't a partnership, nor a gentleman's game. 
It's a fight. Every man for himself. It's all well enough 
to pity your enemies after you've got them where you want 
them, but if you give any quarter before, you will simply 
exchange places." 

"There would be millions, Mr. Dexter, in a comic opera 
built around a national bank magnate blowing himself with 
the hallucination that business is 'every man for himself.' 

Lyon had crossed over to Dexter's side of the table and be- 
gan to talk about him rather than to him. His manner was 
that of a lecturer demonstrating his subject upon a conve- 

112 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



nient piece of material. The specimen seemed to stimulate in 
his mind a tantalizing mixture of curiosity and amusement. 

"If it really were 'every man for himself/ Mr. Dexter, 
where would the bankers be? Not one of them could ever 
have got beyond selling newspapers on the street corner. But 
they couldn't have got that far, because enough capital never 
could have been collected or held together to publish a news- 
paper. The banker who thinks he has fought his way to the 
front without help, is capable of believing that he was born of 
his own will. You are Exhibit A, Mr. Dexter, in a problem 
of refutation that ought not to puzzle a schoolboy. Business 
in general, and banking as a shining instance, is 'many men 
for one another.' Not a business on earth could live a min- 
ute if it didn't have the benefit of a public franchise in some 
shape. When you look the facts square in the face, you find 
that business is neither a game, nor a fight, nor a partnership, 
but it is all three together. I see no reason to doubt that it will 
always be a combination of the three. For all we know, how- 
ever, the proportions of the elements will have to be changed 
a great many times, before human affairs settle down in their 
final adjustment. So far as we have gone, business is a scram- 
ble to let in just enough friends, on the ground floor of a few 
preferred partnerships, to secure them in a winning fight 
with the rest of the world, the non-preferred partners in- 
cluded. The people on the inside couldn't spin a thread if 
a hundred times as many people on the outside didn't consent 
to work with them on terms which the insiders find profitable 
for themselves. Now my point is that there is always a ques- 
tion whether these terms are fair, and whether the outsiders 
have their share of influence in testing the fairness. Of 
course the insiders mean to be fair, but we are all the time 
fighting for the right to be our own judges of ourselves. We 
dispute every inch of approach of the outside partners to pro- 
portional representation in the controversy." 

To tell the truth, Lyon was surprising himself more than 
his hearers, by his excursion into theory. He had not fore- 
seen where he would land when he slipped his moorings. 
Without considering how seriously he would want to stand for 
what he was saying, he was enjoying the effect, on himself no 
less than on the others, of letting himself go and seeing what 
would happen. 

The other men seemed to have lost the connection. Lyon's 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



line of thought was so far from their beaten track that it left 
them with a safe "never- touched-me" feeling. They were even 
recovering themselves enough to feel foolish for having al- 
lowed Lyon to ruffle them by an argument that ended in the 
air. Evans again gave the first sign of a changing mood. 
"When we get this dust of words laid enough to see through 
it, the bright particular moonbeam you seem to be chasing, 
Lyon, is suppression of the fit, and turning control of things 
over to the unfit. " 

"Lyon's conscience is troubled," chimed in Dexter, "be- 
cause brains don't go to the bottom instead of the top." 

"Whether there is any conscience in it or not," retorted 
Lyon, "the assumption that brains and nerve to hog the situa- 
tion are identical, is an overdraft on my sense of the ridicu- 
lous." 

"What remedy do you propose, Logan, for the evils you 
have in mind?" asked his father. 

"That question seems to me to be the chief defense we offer 
for not hunting down the evils themselves," replied Lyon, 
for the first time appearing to speak entirely without dis- 
guise. "It turns out to be a defense that is no credit to us, 
when we think what it implies. It is no excuse for shirking 
today's work, that we can't predict how our great grandchil- 
dren will finish it. We might just as well hold up the doc- 
tors for finding cancer in their patients, because they haven't 
yet learned how to cure it." 

"If we must use comparisons," returned his father, "the 
kind of sentimentality you are sampling seems to me more 
like condemning the human body because the mind controls 
the muscles, instead of the reverse." 

When Logan was in good spirits, and completely at his 
ease, he had a yodling laugh that was more persuasive than 
argument. It had a wide range of expression, and it was es- 
pecially effective when the ludicrous side of an idea struck 
him as its vulnerable point. His regard for his father made 
him use it now with subdued discretion, but even under re- 
straint it gave edge to what he said. "The excruciating thing, 
Father, is that one set of muscles can gravely declare to the 
other sets of muscles, 'You are only muscles, we are mind.' : 

"Suppose we drop the comparisons then," continued Mr. 
Lyon, "and say just what we mean. Whether there are pre- 
ventable evils in the world or not, they would soon be multi- 

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BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



plied a hundred times over, if we should start to cure them on 
the theory that the average man knows how to do his own 
thinking." 

"The other half of that truth," responded Logan, "is a va- 
riation of the 'many men for one another' proposition. 
Neither the average man nor the phenomenal man is capable 
of doing all his own thinking. I wonder if each man ought not 
to have the right to do the fraction of his own thinking that 
is within his capacity, and to make his own selection of people 
to do the rest, up to the point where he begins to be a nuisance 
to his neighbors." 

"It is weak and dangerous," insisted Mr. Lyon, with a re- 
vival of his previous energy, "to dally with the notion that the 
ordinary man could go very far without a guardian. I have 
no hesitation in saying that I know, better than people in gen- 
eral, what they ought to think about things in general." 

"Suppose we grant that, father," responded Logan gently, 
"it doesn't touch the main question. The real issue is this: 
How do you know that your better judgment hasn't usurped 
more authority than it is entitled to as a dictator to men of 
poorer judgment? Political tyranny has always justified 
itself on the same ground. The argument of the few is: — 
'The many don't know. We do. Therefore we have the 
right to govern the many.' No one dares to say that in poli- 
tics in the United States ; but we still say it in business. The 
Kaiser thinks he knows better than his Germans what they 
ought to think about things in general, and he consequently 
maintains a government that regulates them, from the hiring 
of servant girls to declaring war. On the face of it, the re- 
sults are in the Kaiser's favor. As a pure matter of good 
order we couldn't make a better investment than to call in our 
democracy, and hire a competent emperor to run us on the 
Kaiser's plan. But we think we are better off, all things con- 
sidered, paying the penalties of our own incompetence as we 
go along, and meanwhile learning by experience. Isn't it 
conceivable that we should get more out of business too, in 
the end, if we diminished its Kaiserism and increased its 
democracy?" 

"I suppose it is conceivable," mused Mr. Lyon, "that uni- 
versal bankruptcy would usher in the millennium; but so 
many things remain to be said in defense of solvency that I 
can still oppose the experiment with a clear conscience." 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SAFE AND SANE 



The abstract turn of the discussion had made every one 
feel that it had passed out of the danger zone, and common 
consent seemed to have been reached that the whole episode 
was a natural reaction from the day's exertions. Although 
Lyon wanted to point out that at least two questions were 
begged in his father's reply, he preferred to accept the oppor- 
tunity to allow him the last word. He was trying to withdraw 
gracefully, with acknowledgments to the company for the 
mental photographs they had contributed to his researches, 
when Dexter gave a parting sign that he had been hit. 

"Before your debating society adjourns, Lyon, let me give 
you one bit of friendly advice. If you can still make people 
believe you know a little law, hold on to that graft, and don't 
take chances beyond your depth in political economy. You 
would avoid a world of worry about social reform if you would 
buy an economic primer, and learn the lesson that the only 
way for employees to improve their conditions is to stop fight- 
ing their employers and increase the productivity of labor." 

As there was no time left for argument, Lyon merely ob- 
served, with an exasperating affectation of humility: — "It 
was a calamity to civilization, Mr. Dexter, that the primer you 
drew your wisdom from was allowed to go out of print a third 
of a century ago. Its enormous value was in the pointer it 
gave to employers. They might have multiplied our pros- 
perity by taking advantage of it. If organized labor is fight- 
ing against fate, all capital has to do is to cut off the expense 
of opposing the unions, let labor defeat itself, and declare 
extra dividends from the savings. Of course motives of phil- 
anthropy towards laboring men have been the only reason 
why employers have not given themselves the benefit of that 
paragraph in the primer long ago !" 

If Logan Lyon had actually been settled in the role of a 
dispassionate student, rather than of a partisan in social con- 
flicts, he would have been aware that one era was dissolving 
into another less in the fight between hostile social classes, 
than in unconscious changes of views going forward in groups 
like the one now dispersing. He did not know that his own 
position had been shifted by the discussion. In fact, though 
he had changed no specific opinion, he had virtually made the 
decisive transition from the attitude of an attorney to that of 
an inquirer. 

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THE INSURGENT 



VIII 
THE INSURGENT 

"The ground plan of a democracy is that all shares in the 
profits of the cooperation shall be paid for in work, and 
that no one shall have any rights that he does not earn," 



THE strike had been in full force for two weeks. 
The Avery Company had promptly posted notice that 
the plant would shut down six weeks for repairs. As there 
was no work for strike-breakers, picketing was not needed, 
and thus far there had been no violence of any sort that 
could be charged to the strikers. 

The newspapers, as a rule, seemed to be completely baffled 
by the situation. It presented questions for which there was 
no stereotyped answer in their libraries, and they had for 
the most part confined themselves to platitudes. 

The Freeman, which was making the most desperate at- 
tempts to seduce the labor vote, was not sure whether the 
present movement was an eddy or the main current. To 
cover its vacuity of opinion, it avoided direct statements 
about the merits of the particular case, and took refuge in 
more than usually clownish abuse of capitalists in general. 

The Courier, whose editorial page was without a rival as 
a permanent exposition of the perfunctory products of subsi- 
dized insincerity, was alternately unctuous and scurrilous in 
its denunciations of the moral sin of entertaining beliefs not 
dictated by the class bias of its owners. 

The papers which were taken seriously by the intelligent 
sections of the population made the most of the folly of 
strikes in general, and of the failure of the strikers, in the 
present instance, to bring specific charges against the Avery 
Company. They were shy of the question of principle that 
had been raised. While they were trying to decide how to 
treat it, they affected to regard the whole struggle as a purely 
theoretical issue, that had wandered out of its sphere and ac- 
cidentally entangled itself with practical affairs. 

The first mass meeting in the interest of the strike was in 
the Armory, Sunday afternoon. John Graham was an- 
nounced as the chief speaker. 

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Upon Edgerly 's dare, he and Logan Lyon were in the as- 
sembly. For both men the excursion was a voyage of dis- 
covery. Neither had very distinct ideas as to what the dem- 
onstration would be like, but both decided to take the pre- 
caution of wearing cast-off clothes, to avoid being conspicuous. 

The meeting had already been called to order when they 
arrived, but nothing that was taking place on the platform 
was audible more than fifty feet away. The floor of the im- 
mense building was filled with men who were densely packed 
near the speakers, but beyond the range of the voices move- 
ment was not very difficult. As they did not care for the foot- 
ball practice that would have been necessary to get within 
hearing distance, Lyon and Edgerly circulated through the 
outskirts of the crowd, trying to gauge the composition of 
the audience. 

Their first impression was recorded in Lyon's remark to 
Edgerly, as they found an unoccupied spot under the bal- 
cony, nearly opposite the rostrum. "Before we're in any 
deeper, Ernest, it might be well to go home and change our 
clothes. I wouldn't be so very much surprised if an usher in 
uniform came and requested us to retire and dress ourselves 
with due respect for the occasion." 

The faces of both men testified that they felt a good deal 
as though they had caught themselves offering a tip to the 
manager of the Blackstone. 

"We might as well own up," stammered Edgerly, with a 
shamefaced substitute for a smile, "that we don't know our 
Chicago as well as we thought we did. This lot averages 
much better in looks than the grand stand rooters at a West 
Side game." 

"Why, in everything but size it might be a Board of Trade 
crowd," answered Lyon. "It must be that most of them are 
spies like us." 

After another quarter-circuit of the floor, they stopped 
again to compare notes. 

"There are more different kinds than I made out at first," 
began Edgerly, "but I haven't spotted a specimen yet of the 
sort I expected to find in the majority." 

"Yes, I've recovered my spirits a little," laughed Lyon, 
"since I've rubbed against one or two fellows that looked as 
seedy as we do ; but after taking my life in my hands to find 

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out how a gang of bullies would act, I can't make myself feel 
comfortable in such a ladylike collection." 

"It's a model Sunday School," reflected Edgerly, "com- 
pared with the last Republican convention in our district. 
I expected to find a mob of fire-eaters, but most of them are 
not taking it half as seriously as we do." 

"I never got next to a more good natured jumble of des- 
peradoes," assented Lyon. "These scraps of talk we hear are 
pretty good samples of the ideas I suppose we mean by 
Americanism. As I make out the sense of the meeting it's 
about this : — There's the devil to pay, and it's time to get 
busy settling the score. But there's no use getting hot about 
it. We've got means to burn when we get good and ready to 
use them. The other fellows are well enough in their way, 
but they're getting too fresh, and need to be called. After 
the smoke clears we shall shake hands, and make up, and 
like each other all the better ; but before it comes to that the 
bosses are due for a throw-down that they'll remember." 

"I've noticed here and there what looks like a bad man 
prowling around," added Edgerly, "but they don't seem to 
belong to the real push, any more than we do. On the whole, 
it rather booms my self-respect to find out what a fine breed 
of chaps are my fellow-citizens." 

Suddenly a shout rose around the stage, in the middle of 
one of the longer sides of the building. It spread in waves 
till it seemed to fill floor and balconies. Graham had been 
introduced. The reception settled all doubts as to the lean- 
ings of the crowd. It was hard to find a man who was not 
joining with the full power of his lungs, and holding his hat 
at arm's length above his head, wriggling to swing it in spite 
of the crush of his neighbors. Allowing for the contagion 
of mob impulses, it was plain enough that the reception was 
a fair index of the prevailing sentiment, and that it was due 
to sympathy with the movement which Graham represented. 

If the speaker had faced that multitude alone, his physique 
might not at once have caused remark. The fifty men on the 
platform were nearly all above medium stature ; and the chair- 
man of the meeting had a figure that would have been nota- 
ble in any ordinary company; but as they rose to lead the 
ovation one might have suspected that they had been selected 
for the purpose of making Graham look heroic by contrast. 

Although Graham was tall, he was not a giant, and he was 

123 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



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so well proportioned that his height was conspicuous only by 
such comparison. His presence had the pervasive quality 
which at once opens communication with every man in an 
audience. Before the cheering had begun to subside, nearly 
every one was in the peculiar emotional state which a few 
men have the power to produce in a crowd. Each felt as 
though he had a special understanding with the speaker. 

The sheer absence of affectation in Graham's manner, as he 
bowed his acknowledgments, with a look of almost boyish 
pleasure, disarmed even the cold criticism of Lyon and 
Edgerly. The grey Tweed suit, with neglige shirt open sailor 
fashion at the throat, would have been an obvious makeup in 
the case of many men, but the costume helped to strengthen 
the credentials of Graham's genuineness. The careless mass 
of wavy brown hair was in frank secession from custom ; but 
the lawlessness kept so well within the limits of reasonable 
independence that it had none of the marks of advertising. 
There was strength without coarseness in every feature of 
the face; and the olive skin, weather-bronzed but not hard- 
ened, seemed peculiarly pliant to generous emotions. 

"It's a handsome brute all right," growled Lyon in an un- 
dertone. "A sure enough ribbon-winner in the stock show," 

"Too athletic for an artist," murmured Edgerly, "and too 
esthetic for an athlete. If he lives fifty years longer, and lets 
his beard grow, he'll be an easy ringer for Jove." 

Graham's instinct seemed to designate the moment when 
a gesture could bring silence. In place of the commotion 
that had reduced the previous platform proceedings to pan- 
tomime, and in transition from the paroxysm of welcome to 
the new leader, there came a few seconds of quiet so expectant 
that it was almost ominous. 

Even to those nearest the platform, the first words did not 
seem to be spoken in a loud tone, nor with noticeable effort, 
but they reached every person in the hall. Graham had the 
oratorical temperament, with the physical equipment to make 
it effective. 

"This celebration means that the soul of Abe Lincoln is 
marching on ; we are here to ratify the vow that 'government 
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth.' " 

There seemed to be nothing forced about the outburst of 
applause that greeted the familiar words. The psychology 

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and logic of the situation were : — The man who can manage 
this multitude must be a power: Whether we see it or not, 
whatever such a man says must have a meaning. If we kept 
still, it would look as though we didn't understand him, or 
didn't go with him : Therefore we must back up every word 
he says. 

"New times, new tasks! It has been more than a genera- 
tion since the people of this country asserted themselves. The 
call is sounding now for a new exertion of the people's 
power!" 

Under cover of the cheers, Edgerly commented to Lyon, 
"Whether he's going to say anything or not, you can't help 
liking the beggar." 

"He has the dangerous gift of making you feel like a sneak 
thief if you don't intend to agree with him." Lyon was more 
than half afraid he would agree with him, but he hoped he 
would not be called upon to part with any of his choicest 
idols. 

"The earth is the people's and the fulness thereof!" 

The sentiment struck a sympathetic chord, and there could 
hardly have been more force and volume in the response if 
it had greeted notice of an immediate cash dividend on the 
equity. 

"The next great task for the people is to make it impossible 
for too few men to control too much of the earth !" 

This time the agreement was equally evident, but less dem- 
onstrative. The problem factor that haunted the proposition 
dampened extravagant enthusiasm. 

"Prescription for a revolution ;" stage-whispered Edgerly, 
heavy-villainously. "One truism, before taken, to be well 
shaken." 

"I'm not sure that it's so far out of the way," soliloquized 
Lyon. "A derelict truism is a mighty serious menace to navi- 
gation." 

"With all its resources," continued Graham, "the world 
would be a wilderness without human labor. 

"All the human labor that is concerned in turning the 
wilderness to human use is entitled to pro rota influence in 
controlling the results !" 

The roar of approbation that greeted this sentiment was 
more confident than any of its predecessors. Every one rec- 
ognized the key note of the labor movement. As usual, the 

3 25 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE INSURGENT 



slightly varied statement affected those already convinced as 
a conquest for their faith instead of a mere reassertion. 

"The world is a castle, provisioned for the longest siege it 
will ever have to endure. The officers have got control of 
the supplies, and are turning them into dollars for them- 
selves, instead of holding them subject to the needs of the 
garrison." 

Lame as it was, the figure caught the imagination of the 
hearers. The jeers with which they greeted it showed 
that their attitude toward the situation was more contemptu- 
ous than bitter. Graham felt their mood and humored it by 
adding : — 

"It doesn't help matters much for the rank and file, to 
know that the officers are: mostly good fellows, and religiously 
believe that the world is better off with more dollars pouring 
into their pockets than with more goods going to the use of 
the garrison." 

"If the garrison were disposed to be ugly," muttered Lyon, 
"that would be a nasty report to circulate. The safety valve 
for that kind of over-pressure, however, is our American 
fiction that we're only temporarily in the rank and file, and 
in a day or two our turn will come to be officers." 

For ten minutes more Graham fortified his standing with 
his public by similar variations of familiar notions. Then 
came the real test of his persuasive power, as he tried to give 
the crowd working use of an idea slightly beyond their or- 
dinary range of reasoning. 

"Every democracy is a union of people working a certain 
plot of ground on shares. 

"Our nation is simply a big ranch started on the cooper- 
ative principle, and branching out into diversified industries 
whenever they are demanded by the needs of the ranchers. 

"The ground plan of a democracy is that all shares in the 
profits of the cooperation shall be paid for in work, and that 
no one shall have any rights that he does not earn. 

"Any ranchers that are content to stand by and see that 
ground plan perverted, are not democrats but degenerates!" 

Perhaps the words alone would not have made a strong im- 
pression, but carried by Graham's personality they struck an 
electric spark. It is not easy to tell when a thought is mak- 
ing its way through a mass of people. Mere transfer of nerv- 
ous stimulus is often mistaken for mental action. Graham 

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BETWEEN ERAS 



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was not sure that the shouting multitude before him actually 
knew what he meant, hut they were in a receptive temper, 
and he believed he could succeed in lodging his idea. 

"Let me sketch a picture. I will use neither the darkest nor 
the brightest colors, but the lines will be drawn from real life. 

"On that side are a brother and a sister. They were born in 
a good home. Father and mother were industrious, virtuous 
and happy. They did their best to give their children a start 
in the world. They guarded their health, and fed them with 
wholesome food and sent them to school, and taught them to 
love fairness and fidelity. But these parents had to work 
hard, and as soon as the children were of legal age it was 
necessary for them to begin earning their own support. The 
boy went into a trade. The girl began at the bottom in a big 
store. They were good workers. They were always worth 
more than they received. But to the end of their lives they 
never had a right to the next day's work. Their employers 
could discharge them if they pleased, and after they had 
used up the little savings that they could lay by from their 
meagre pay they would have only the right to take their 
chances between employers and other competitors for the 
same jobs. 

"On this side of the picture are another brother and sister. 
Before they were born their father had come into control of 
enormous wealth. From babyhood they were watched and 
served and amused and petted by relays of physicians, and 
nurses, and governesses and flunkeys. They were supplied 
with all the luxuries that money could buy. They were 
housed in private palaces, and had private parks for their 
playgrounds, and were carried in private cars, and entertained 
on private yachts, and even favored by private legislation. 
When they came of age they had never known a thought of 
any one's comfort but their own, and they had no intention 
of expending effort except in catering to themselves. Yet, in 
the same democracy, founded on the law of one and the same 
justice for all, this useless and effortless brother and sister 
are guaranteed life-long privilege. They have the vested 
right of wasting on themselves every year as much as a thou- 
sand brothers and sisters of the other type, working with all 
their might, can ever earn as their annual wage. 

"This double picture is a snap-shot of the whole labor 
problem. 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE INSURGENT 



"Every thing that capital and labor are fighting about turns 
on the decision of one question. 

"Capitalism asserts that these do-nothing spenders are 
right. Democracy declares that these do-nothing spenders 
are wrong. 

"The conflict is eternal until we remove the contradiction ! 

"Organized labor is the attorney of Democracy bringing 
action for adjudication of the question before the moral judg- 
ment of the world I" 



So far as the immediate assembly was concerned, Graham 
felt that he had accomplished his purpose. He had stated 
the issue in a form so simple that he did not see how it could 
be made plainer. He had presented it as a conflict not of 
jealousy but of justice. Whether or not his hearers appre- 
ciated the difference, they showed that they were with him 
for practical purposes, and he felt his confidence increasing 
that the course of the campaign could be made to follow the 
general lines of his plan. 

Graham did not count much on mass meetings as means 
of popular instruction. He said they were not the most eco- 
nomical way of getting knowledge into people's heads, but 
they were useful for putting people on better terms with ideas 
already collected, He did not think the total impression of 
the meeting on the crowd itself would be strengthened by 
anything he might say further. To set the movement right, 
however, before the larger public which would be reached 
through the newspapers, he had something to add. 

"The campaign that we opened two weeks a;go is along 
entirely new lines. We have reversed the usual order. We 
are not now fighting over spoils. We are fighting to change 
conditions that raise all the questions of spoils. 

"Both laboring men and capitalists have tried to prove that 
we should fail because we were not fighting for anything tan- 
gible, but merely for a theory. 

"The shortest distance to a, given point is a theory, if it is 
only the right theory ! 

"Organized labor has cheated itself too long by trying to 
reach its aims without settling its theory. 

"The present campaign is a labor-saving experiment. 

128 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE INSURGENT 



"After we have fought one or two fundamental questions 
of theory to a finish, we can apply the results at our leisure. 

"I said a moment ago that all labor problems run back to 
one question. I want to explain that a little further. 

"Business is the reign of capital. Democracy is the reign 
of people. 

"Underneath all the details of the labor problem is this 
radical issue : On the one hand, Capitalism decrees that cap- 
ital shall fix the destinies of people; on the other hand De- 
mocracy demands that people shall fix the destinies of capital. 

"Between these two principles the conflict is as irrepressible 
in modern society as w T ar between the principles of state sov- 
ereignty and nationality was in American history. 

"There never can be peace between these two principles 
till one has surrendered to the constitutional supremacy of 
the other. 

"In the clash of arms, neither fighters nor observers may 
always be able to see the whole meaning of every minor move- 
ment. If we ever lose our bearings in this campaign, we 
shall find them again by going back to first principles. Or- 
ganized labor has enlisted for the war, and so long as the war 
holds on, and whatever its shifting fortunes may be, our ob- 
ject, first, last and all the time, is to suppress the sovereignty 
of capital, and to establish the sovereignty of people !" 

The unfailing encouragement that came from the crowd 
made Graham feel guilty for questioning either its interest 
or its capacity. After illustrating the last point in ways that 
put it into everyday pictures, and restated it in familiar con- 
crete terms, he passed to the last point that he intended to 
present. 

"What I have said is a final answer to the charge that we 
don't know what we are fighting for. We know what we are 
after, as clearly as the United States government did when it 
warned the Spaniards out of Cuba. The last point I have to 
make today is that our plan of campaign is just as definite 
as the purpose which we mean to win. 

"Modern business is a vast system of taxation, without rep- 
resentation. The hard working brother and sister labor and 
pay tribute to the do-nothing brother and sister, and have no 

129 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE INSURGENT 



chance to get a hearing for their side of the argument that 
the arrangement is unequal. 

"The Avery Company directors are held within certain 
limits by the possible competition of other corporations. 
Within those limits they have the power every year to dis- 
pose of profits that run into the millions. They can make 
presents of bigger salaries to themselves as officers, or bigger 
dividends to themselves as stockholders, or future bonuses to 
themselves! and fellow stockholders, in the form of undivided 
surplus. Labor was a partner in making those profits. Our 
campaign will not end till labor has a proportional partner- 
ship in distributing the profits ! 

"Our fight is not with selected persons, nor with a particular 
corporation, but with, a system ! 

"We are not contending for any petty changes of policy ; 
but for destruction of the system which damns its best policies 
by making them the dictates of despotism instead of the deci- 
sions of Democracy. 

"Capitalism makes a farce of Democracy ! 

"Capitalism is disfranchisement of the hardest working 
partner in the business ! 

"Capitalism makes dollars domineer over men ! 

"Democracy demands that men shall be masters over dol- 
lars ! 

"Our fight is for recognition of the principle that all the 
different kinds of men who share in producing the dollars, 
shall share in the same proportion in disposing of the dollars! 

"When we attacked the Avery Company, we merely opened 
fire on the most exposed outpost of Capitalism I 

"Whatever happens at this point, we shall fight it out on 
this line till labor comes to its own as a recognized part of 
every business. If it turns out to be a hundred years' war, 
or a thousand years' war, there can never be permanent peace 
with Capitalism, till labor has its proper voice in the man- 
agement of every business, and in enacting the laws that gov- 
ern all business ! 

"In a word then, the aim of organized labor is the triumph 
of Democracy over Capitalism. The system by which we shall 
fight to suppress the tyranny of Capitalism will be removal 
of the restricted representation dictated by Capitalism, and 
substitution of proportional suffrage of all the interests con- 
cerned ! 

130 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE INSURGENT 



"We refuse to cooperate any longer on terms that give the 
lion's share of benefit to the men whose hardest work is water- 
ing the kind of stock they breed in Wall Street ! 

"The world belongs to the workers ! We are fighting for 
the Democracy of merit! He shall rank highest among us 
who does the best work!" 



131 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE UNCONVINCED 



THE UNCONVINCED 



IX 
THE UNCONVINCED 

'But what's the use? The only difference between me and 
the rest of the Company is that they don't believe a word 
of these things, while I subscribe to them in the abstract 
but don't believe they are available." 



IT was an item of Halleck's fixed program to spend a part of 
Sunday afternoon with working men. If he was not at 
regularly appointed meetings, he would drop in at one of the 
headquarters, where large numbers were sure to be found ; or 
he would accomplish the same thing by a couple of hours with 
the patrons of his "Casino." 

It would have been neither necessary nor easy for Halleck 
to disguise himself. With the exception of one or two priests, 
no clergyman in Chicago was intimate with so many promi- 
nent labor leaders, and probably there was no man in the city, 
except some of their own representatives, who would have 
been recognized in so many labor groups. 

Halleck went to the Armory meeting, not to get acquainted 
with Graham's ideas, but to observe their effect upon the 
crowd. Halleck and Graham had gone over the ground so 
often together that they thoroughly understood each other. 
Probably neither was aware how much he had been influ- 
enced by the other. Of the two, Halleck represented 
thought, and Graham action. So far as mere abstract ideas 
went, they did not differ very much. The antithesis between 
them was that between the philosopher and the man of affairs. 
Compared with most men of his class, Halleck was precipi- 
tate. Contrasted with men of Graham's type, he was reac- 
tionary. In principle, the difference was that the one put the 
virtue of thoughts foremost, the other the efficacy of deeds. 

If Halleck could have had his way, social progress would 
have been through stages of mental capillary attraction. New 
thoughts would have been taken up by new strata of people, 
and society would have assimilated new forces, and accom- 
plished evolutionary transformations, without shock or catas- 
trophe. 

135 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE UNCONVINCED 



Graham would have been at a loss for particulars, if he had 
been called upon to give an account of any study he had ever 
made of possible alternatives. He had never approached the 
subject by a philosopher's method. He had a practical man's 
conviction, however, that if an interest isn't getting what it 
wants the only way is to go after it. He had no faith in the 
policy of correcting abuses by submission of the abused. He 
would not, if he knew it, do evil that good might come, but 
he believed that suffering a wrong was a greater evil than 
fighting it. 

In strict justice to Halleck, the contrast should be quali- 
fied. The two men differed not so much in policy, or in fun- 
damental belief, as in choice of fulcrum for their effort. They 
would hardly be found opposing each other if a sufficiently 
long view were taken of final aims. Under a given provoca- 
tion, however, Halleck would persist in trusting to reason 
long after Graham had decided that nothing remained but 
resort to force. 

Halleck had no doubt that John Graham was much nearer 
than David Lyon to a correct vision of the final order of the 
world. He could not understand how an intelligent person 
could disagree essentially with Graham about what should be 
and must be in the course of time. Yet he could easily ex- 
plain Mr. Lyon's obstinacy in the present instance. A town 
meeting government would so surely and so soon wreck the 
Avery Company, that it was perfectly natural to give short 
shrift to any proposition which looked in that direction. At 
the same time, Mr. Lyon's inability to question the finality of 
present social arrangements seemed to Halleck less excusable 
than Graham's incontinent idealism. 

Halleck's problem was to lay off a middle ground that 
might be occupied as a basis of compromise between the pol- 
icy of perpetuating conditions and the policy of forcing pre- 
mature application of theories. 

At present Graham was telling the truth in this sense: — 
This is the way the people of the world will work together 
when they have become adapted to working together in this 
way ! At the same time, David Lyon was telling only a half 
truth, even if it was a less impotent platitude in form, when 
he insisted that Graham was inflating his balloon with non- 
sense, because people are not ready to work together in that 
way now. 

136 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE UNCONVINCED 



The directions were plain enough in which the two parties 
must move, if they were ever to meet on common ground. 
The Company must give some recognition to the principle 
that business should not be autocracy but partnership. Labor 
must concede that transition from the present system to more 
democratic methods must be by shorter steps than the ulti- 
matum to the Company demanded. 

Halleck had not expected Graham to say anything which 
they had not fully discussed more than once, but he had 
hoped that something might occur to furnish a clue to a prac- 
tical suggestion. He had been disappointed. He saw no 
immediate prospect of conciliation. There was no reason to 
believe that either party would at present modify its views. 

Kissinger had been a hearer of another sort. He had come 
early, and had stationed himself almost within touch of the 
platform. He was convinced in advance of much that Gra- 
ham w^ould say, and of more that he might not say. His 
problem was, can it be made real? Is there a transformation 
of energy by which unworkable truth may be substituted for 
workable error? 

Neither intellect nor will was decisive in Kissinger, but 
each was a menial to his sentiments. The strike had rudely 
awakened him to his situation. He had never been compelled 
before to recognize the ugly facts. For a week the truth had 
been staring him in the face that the section of life which 
interested him most was practically a beggar's auction. 
Neither his thoughts nor his actions could bid anything 
which would tend to secure the things that his sympathies 
desired. 

If actuality may be measured by degrees of assent and dis- 
sent, the Utopias which Kissinger knew by heart were more 
real to him than the business system in which he earned his 
living. They enlisted his affection, while business merely com- 
manded his obedience. But the better societies, in which his 
imagination sought refuge, seemed to him to be separated 
from the literal world by a chasm as impassable as the spaces 
between the planets. 

From the literature of social aspiration Kissinger had ab- 
sorbed the poetry of prophecy without the logic. The brighter 
the visions the more the pity, as he brooded over them, that 
there was no means of merging them with our social system. 

137 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE UNCONVINCED 



Graham's contrast between people and capital as the stand- 
ard of social value, and his distinction between autocracy 
and democracy as principles: of business management, af- 
fected Kissinger as original discoveries. They seemed to 
point out a practical path from the unreal actual world to the 
impossible real world. At the same time they gave him such 
a sense of vindication and of power as Adams and Leverrier 
may be supposed to have felt, after probing the heavens at the 
point they designated had resulted in the discovery of 
Neptune. 

But more important still for Kissinger, although he was 
not yet aware of it, was the effect of Graham's personal 
equation. If the logic that Graham used had come to Kissin- 
ger's attention in some other way, he might simply have 
woven it into the tissue of his dreams, without suspicion that 
it closed the circuit of reality. The fateful fact was that 
Graham seemed to be a working demonstration of the validity 
of his reasoning. He incarnated the principles. He was 
actually moving on the world with the force of the new ideas, 
and the world's resistance proved the energy of the impact. 
Graham's role was not impotent yearning. It was grappling 
the world with a kind of strength able to cope with its own 
power. For Kissinger, Graham was the Word made flesh. 

Instead of starting directly towards home, Lyon and 
Edgerly turned north in State Street for a stroll through a 
section of the town which they seldom visited. They had 
no special interest in the surroundings, but the very dreari- 
ness was a magnet, and they wanted to avoid a route in which 
they might meet acquaintances. 

They had been jostled apart by the swaying of the crowd 
during Graham's address. Each had indulged his own re- 
flections, and at first, after reaching the open air, neither 
seemed inclined to talk. When they had walked far enough 
to have a comfortable area of sidewalk to themselves, Edgerly 
began, more in the manner of soliloquizing than of speaking 
to Lyon : — 

"It had two chief effects on me. In the first place, I never 
get over my wonder at the homeopathic quantity of thought 
that can be made to go with a crowd ; and then, if there is any 
nourishment in that sort of baby food, what keeps all the 
world from building up on it at once?" 

138 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE UNCONVINCED 



Lyon did not reply for a moment. There was nothing to 
show that he had heard Edgerly. He seemed to be turning 
over thoughts of his own. When he spoke, it was in such an 
absent tone that Edgerly suspected he had dismissed the 
subject of the meeting altogether, and was thinking about 
something else. 

"You don't realize the apartness of the academic world, 
Ernest. You jobbers of ideas are sorting over the whole stock 
a season before it gets to the retailers. Of course everything 
you see in the show windows the day of the Spring openings 
looks out of date." 

"If you'd make it bargain counter remnants," laughed 
Edgerly, "I might be willing to stand corrected." 

"I couldn't honestly say it seemed to me like shopworn 
goods," objected Lyon. 

"Of course I don't look for announcement of the latest 
scientific discoveries in a stump speech," explained Edgerly, 
"but it seems like a hideous waste of opportunity to have the 
ear of so many people, and send them away with two or three 
primary school proverbs that are as plain to everybody as the 
nose on your face." 

"You learned folks flatter yourselves that your abstractions 
furnish the go-round for the world." Lyon's indifference 
had changed to animation. "The fact of the business is, 
primary school proverbs are the real pillars of civilization. 
Just think why we spend millions every year on our public 
schools. It isn't to manufacture advanced thinkers. It's 
mostly to convince the latest accessions to 1 the world's igno- 
rance that 'three from two you cannot take.' When they 
have had so much beaten into their heads, the majority of 
the newcomers have to leave school and hustle for a living. 
If they ever learn anything more, that their job doesn't teach, 
they have to catch it on the fly." 

"All the more reason why they should not be put off with 
cheap talk when they line up for a lesson." 

"No matter who you are," insisted Lyon, "you have to pull 
off a certain amount of sleight-of-hand to make a crowd 
listen. That ought not to count against him." 

"I'm not condemning what he said, but simply regretting 
what he didn't say." In judging Graham by an impossible 
standard, Edgerly was at least partially sincere. He merely 
assumed his own personal demands as a measure for the pub- 

139 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE UNCONVINCED 



lie. He said what he would have stood by if his own kind 
had composed Graham's audience. While he was thus, to a 
certain extent, betraying his ignorance of the contrast be- 
tween the mental needs of the many and those of his own 
class, he was intentionally overdoing the matter, for the sake 
of drawing Lyon out. The brothers-in-law had debated social 
questions enough to understand each other's prejudices. 
Edgerly 's sympathies were with Graham, but he was experi- 
menting to see whether a little opposition would bring Lyon 
to the rescue. The plan worked better than he expected ; but 
it was less because Lyon was caught by the trick, than be- 
cause he had been trying to think how he would conduct the 
case, if he had accepted a retainer from Graham. 

"Suppose you had listened for Father, Ernest, not for your- 
self ; would it have seemed so very commonplace?" 

"Do you mean to say that he hasn't heard every one of 
those things a thousand times over?" 

"That doesn't tell the story. We've all heard a thousand 
things a thousand times over, that we have no idea of putting 
into practice, except in a Pickwickian sense. We should have 
had the New Testament under life sentence to solitary con- 
finement long ago, if it had got freedom enough to assert itself 
literally. There's no disturbance in the folk-lore that God 
is the Father of us all, so long as the rest of the legend runs 
that God hands out all the good and evil of our lot, just as 
they come. There's nothing to do but submit. It's an en- 
tirely different affair if we read between the lines that not 
the justice of God but the cussedness of man gives some of 
the children the apple, and the rest the core. With that 
version before the public, to remind ourselves that we are all 
one family spells revolution. The startling thing about these 
platitudes of Graham is that he means them. They are not 
mythology. They are items that he proposes to figure into 
future Avery Company contracts. When they are pious 
figures of speech they are bread pills. As straight business 
propositions they are bombshells. It remains to be seen 
whether they have force enough to break into the system." 

Edgerly could not afford to go beyond objection to Gra- 
ham's choice of weapons. Criticism of the purpose for which 
he used them would be a confession that he was playing a 
part. To hold Lyon as long as possible on his present course, 
Edgerly merely varied the form of his previous comment : — 

140 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE UNCONVINCED 



"I wish I could see any prospect that toy-pistol practice would 
develop the necessary penetration." 

"Well," responded Lyon sharply, "he hinted at two or 
three kinds of attack that we could stop only by brute force. 
If either of them ever got a footing inside our lines it would 
mean radical reorganization of business. 

"For instance," continued Lyon, "take his illustration of 
the brothers and sisters. The idea that men are equal in 
earning powers is too silly to talk about, but he didn't make 
any such claim. On the other hand, I don't believe there is 
one business man in a thousand who wouldn't endorse the 
abstract proposition that people ought to have only what they 
earn. We tumble over ourselves when we try to justify 
everybody's holdings so long as they are legal. If we couldn't 
run a steel plant without unloading on our customers a per 
cent of defective rails equal to the ratio of good for nothing 
spenders that our beautiful system has produced in the last 
generation, we should say we were dubs at the business. In- 
stead of insisting that defective rails have as good claim to 
acceptance as perfect ones, we should admit that we had still 
something to learn about processes, and we should give our 
experts no peace till they had told us how to improve our 
output. We know perfectly well that thousands of people are 
flourishing without earning anything at all, and other thou- 
sands earn various fractions of what they get. Of course 
that means so much taken indirectly from the earnings of 
other people. We refuse to admit it, because we can't see 
how far the admission might carry us. Any one who has his 
brains with him must sooner or later discover that such a 
position is a logical and moral stultification. We say it is 
business to learn how to keep flaws out of steel rails, but it 
is not business to learn how to keep flaws out of the justice 
due to the men that make the rails! It may be a nursery 
amusement to turn the light on such an absurdity, but it will 
be revolution number one when business gets honest enough 
to acknowledge the contradiction." 

Edgerly was ready to hold his breath for fear of stumbling 
into an interruption. His innocent concession, "I see that, 
of course," was offered less as a minor retraction than as a 
query about the rest of the argument. 

"Then," Lyon went on, "it would be revolution number 
two if we should take literally the proposition that business 

141 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE UNCONVINCED 



is essentially partnership. Business today recognizes the 
partnership element only at the stock end. In its ownership 
and operation it is a few men making plans and using a great 
many more men as tools. When we get down to the real 
facts, we find that these men who rate as tools of the trade 
have a larger stake in the business than most of the men who 
own the stock. For the operatives the business is life. For 
the stockholders the business is only an incident of life. Yet 
the stockholders or the financiers behind them have the long 
end of the rights, while the workers have chiefly duties. It 
turns out that business is occupying the castle in the air today, 
while theorists like Graham are getting their feet planted on 
the ground. There is neither rhyme nor reason in a few 
people taking possession of the world's opportunities, and is- 
suing notice to the great majority, 'You may stay on the earth 
just as 1 long as you can make yourselves useful to us by obey- 
ing our orders.' Exploiting the opportunities of the world is 
a cooperative process. The scale of title to the results of the 
process is bound to be wrong, if it is calculated on the idea 
that some of the people engaged in the process have proprie- 
tary rights in the process while others have not. If we were 
not doing business under an optical illusion, we should see 
that ownership of opportunity in the world is usurpation, 
unless it is universally distributed. Every man born is an 
authentic copy of nature's passport to join in the processes of 
life, and to enjoy all the rewards and emoluments in the ratio 
of his own contribution to the common enterprise. The only 
just limit is the right of every body else to share on the same 
basis." 

Edgerly was too much astonished to make any further at- 
tempt at concealment. He drew away to the edge of the side- 
walk, eyeing Lyon as though he had sudden suspicions of 
mistaken identity. "Give me time to collect myself, Logan," 
he stammered. "Are you stringing me, or is this the latest 
variation of 'Saul also?' I can imagine Wall Street pulling 
for free silver, and the Steel Trust lobbying for repeal of the 
tariff, but there must be a mental aberration somewhere when 
I seem to hear you outgrahaming Graham." 

"My death of strangulation will be on your conscience," 
warned Lyon melodramatically, "if you stop me again before 
I have had my say. There remains revolution number three. 
Whether we had one and two in their proper order, or started 

142 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE UNCONVINCED 



with three, would make no difference in the end. Either 
would bring the other two as necessary riders." 

Lyon hesitated a moment, with the proviso that he had not 
scouted the ground quite as far ahead in this case as in the 
others. Then, as though he had found his reckoning, he pur- 
sued the argument : — 

"The fact is, since we are all men together, and not some 
men and some things, I can see no maintainable reason why 
putting ourselves into the making of a business doesn't 
create, for all of us alike, a right of suffrage in the manage- 
ment of the business." 

"Do you mean," broke in Edgerly, in spite of the warning, 
"that John Smith's work in the power house entitles him to 
an equal voice with your father in the Company's affairs?" 

"I certainly do not mean that John Smith's work in the 
power house entitles him to equal voice with the President of 
the Company, and more than that, I know that God Almighty 
couldn't make their voices equal, unless he reprocessed both. 
What I mean is that manhood suffrage, for all it is worth, 
belongs to John Smith of the power house, in his relation to 
the Company, by the same right, and in the same sense in 
which it belongs to him in the state." 

Lyon seemed to be casting about for a clearer way of ex- 
pressing his thought. His next approach was indirect. 

"Our ideas of democratic government are four-fifths fiction 
anyhow. That Russian Jew in the doorway has probably 
got his naturalization papers, and unless he forfeits his rights 
by crime no one can expatriate him. He is an American 
citizen as much as we are, and the whole power of government 
may be invoked to keep any one from depriving him of his 
rights under the law. That's one side of it. Now what share 
has he in the government? Why, we say he has the same 
share that I have, and it is represented by one vote apiece. 
That's where our hallucination begins, and where it fondly 
lingers. Instead of being the crowning glory of citizenship, 
that vote represents an irreducible minimum of political in- 
fluence, which grades up to the boss rule or the popular idola- 
try by which one man sways the nation. The ballot is merely 
a clumsy device for registering the public opinion which is 
formed by other means. Freedom to exert oneself com- 
pletely in shaping opinion is the substantial democratic asset. 
A hundred members of a woman's club of the right sort may 

143 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE UNCONVINCED 



do more to decide the next election than a hundred thousand 
masculine nonentities with votes in their hands. Our Rus- 
sian friend back there may cancel my vote, but he can't out- 
weigh my influence till he gets a thousand means of making 
himself felt that I can use and he can't. I'm not jealous of 
him, because the interests that I represent are able to form 
combinations enough to maintain a fair equilibrium with the 
interests that get his support." 

After considering a moment, Lyon drew his conclusion. 
"That comes pretty near furnishing a model for industrial 
equity. John Smith of the power house can never weigh as 
much in the business as any one of a thousand other men all 
the way along up the line, not to speak of those at the top ; 
but his share in the work gives him a perfectly good claim to 
make his suffrage felt precisely one John Smith's worth in 
the Company; and perhaps a thousand John Smiths ought 
occasionally to combine and defeat the head of the concern. 
A few trifling questions in arithmetic will have to be worked 
out, to be sure, before the claims are adjusted; but we shall 
simply be hanging on to a semi-barbarous makeshift, instead 
of arriving at an enlightened organization, so long as a few 
dozen of us are the Company, and the thousands mere casual 
hirelings." 

They had wandered west, almost to the river, then north, 
and were now sauntering east on Monroe Street. As they 
reached the corner of La Salle, the deserted brokers' high- 
way, in the dusk of the Sunday evening, was as gruesome as 
a prison corridor. Edgerly stopped, and with a sort of 
crossing-policeman's gesture halted Lyon. The place had 
prompted a ghoulish thought. " What's to hinder me from 
turning an honest dollar, Logan, by dropping into one of the 
newspaper offices and selling them your interview? I reckon 
'twould be a scoop that would crowd Graham's stuff out of 
the morning edition." 

The conceit tickled Lyon's fancy too, for a moment. 
"Wouldn't it scorch the sheets !" he chuckled. Then the asso- 
ciations of the region seemed to recall him to reality. "But 
what's the use?" he muttered, with a long breath that might 
have meant either regret or resolution. "The only difference 
between me and the rest of the Company is that they don't 
believe a word of these things, while I subscribe to them in 
the abstract but don't believe they are available. It comes 

144 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE UNCONVINCED 



to one and the same thing at last. Graham gets it harder 
from me tomorrow morning than from any one else in the 
bunch. " 

"If they are true," shifted Edgerly, "how do you know they 
are not available?" 

"Simply because the ordinary man's expectation of com- 
bining knowledge with a saving sense of proportion isn't an 
insurable risk. The same truth makes one man a good citi- 
zen and another a dangerous crank. We can't admit these 
things within the range of working influence, because there 
is no guarantee that they wouldn't be carried to the extreme 
of upsetting everything. I hadn't thought of it till this 
moment, but it just occurs to me that I might as well schedule 
myself as incipient revolution number four. You can't make 
yourself surer of a practical man's contempt than by telling 
him he has obligations to truths not yet available. I find I'm 
drifting into the class of suspects who would have it the most 
important business of business to make truths available, in- 
stead of ruling them out of consideration till brought to terms 
by outside force." 

They called a taxi at the Palmer House, and arrived at 
David Lyon's just in time to calm the first stages of panic. 
The family party had nearly persuaded itself that the ab- 
sentees were victims of violence. 



145 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



I 



THE MORALIST 



THE MORALIST 



X 

THE MORALIST 

"The key to the social struggle in its present stage is the 
question : — Shall the social aim be to use men for the sake 
of capital, or to use capital for the sake of men?" 



SOCIALLY the Patriarchs 7 Club still ranked first among 
the commercial organizations of Chicago. There had 
been a time when no local enterprise of large scope was sure 
of success until it had received the stamp of the Club's ap- 
proval. During this period, little of the work that made Chi- 
cago the metropolis of the Middle West was finished without 
the active aid of the Club, or some of its members. If its 
prestige had declined, it was not because the average char- 
acter of the Patriarchs had changed, but because growth of the 
city necessarily distributed leadership over a wider area. 

When the original members were in their usual places at 
the Club dinners, everything that occurred had the impor- 
tance of a public event. Whether the Club endorsed opinions 
expressed by speakers, or merely listened without committing 
itself, or repudiated the views, the fact was always consid- 
ered worthy of report and usually of editorial comment. 

If the smile or the frown of the Patriarchs was no longer 
as decisive as formerly, there was still no equal number of 
men in the city whose collective opinion of a business propo- 
sition would carry greater weight. They were the bulwarks 
of Chicago's most conservative financial traditions. 

The last meeting of the Club for the season was to have 
been addressed by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. 
Illness had compelled him to abandon the trip at Pittsburg, 
and his regrets had reached the Club Secretary only a few 
hours before the time of the banquet. Quick work by the 
executive committee had induced Edgerly to stand in the 
gap. 

It had been thought best not to advise the members of the 
disappointment, and they were present in nearly full num- 
bers, each with the guest that the rules allowed. Under any 
circumstances it would have been a formidable array. While 
it could not have been truthfully described as the brains of 

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THE MORALIST 



Chicago, nearly every man in the company was in the front 
ranks of his specialty; and between members and guests all 
the principal divisions of business and the professions were 
represented. 

To be perfectly at ease in talking to such a body, one should 
have a subject so remote from the ordinary interests of the 
hearers that immunity of prepossession might be assumed. 
Even then, to rob the ordeal completely of its terrors, time 
for ample preparation would be indispensable. 

Edgerly could take refuge in neither of these conditions. 
Indeed, lie had partly consented and partly proposed to dis- 
cuss a subject with respect to which it was safe to reckon every 
man present as both suspicious and sensitive. It was a sub- 
ject, too, with which all his dealings had been purely schol- 
astic. He had an ample supply of raw material for its treat- 
ment, but if he had allowed himself more time for reflection 
he might not have risked the imprudence of trying to work 
it over, on the spur of the moment, into publishable con- 
clusions. 

Although Edgerly had never been accused by his univer- 
sity colleagues of over-weening self-distrust, his first inventory 
of the social authorities grouped at the tables had dampened 
his assurance into limp fear that his undertaking was both 
farcical and imprudent. He could not remember that he had 
ever had a more thoroughly miserable time with himself than 
during the earlier stages of the seemingly interminable 
process of serving the dinner. 

On the other hand, Edgerly was one of a half dozen men 
at the University who were adepts at a peculiar art of linguis- 
tic legerdemain. It was a manipulation of polysyllabic dic- 
tion, and rapid-fire elocution, that might not be admired, and 
might even be resented, but it could not be resisted. Its ef- 
fectiveness in compelling a hearing increased with the gen- 
eral intelligence and self-importance of the public on which 
it was practiced. It kept the most blase audience taking 
notice. It piqued suspicion that, for better or for worse, it was 
not just what it seemed. The higher the hearers rated them- 
selves in the scale of sophistication, the more they were bound 
to watch out not to miss a trick. It was a species of audible 
puzzle-picture. At one moment it was apparently an en- 
durance test of verbal and vocal acrobatics. At the next, it 
had turned the assembly into involuntary clinical material, 

150 



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THE MORALIST 



for measuring capacity to distinguish between opulence of 
thought and resounding permutations of the vocabulary. 
Again it was provocative implication that the stylistic pyro- 
technics were merely incidental excitements, to pique the 
ennui of the undiscerning ; while the occult thread of esoteric 
wisdom would manifest itself throughout to those of elect 
understanding. 

Edgerly was in doubt how much of this section of his 
equipment it would be safe to unlimber for use upon the 
present company ; but the sense of having it in reserve offset 
some of his compunctions, by affording the prospect of a par- 
tial means of escaping the full penalties of extemporaneous- 
ness. 

Yet this was not the whole case. Edgerly had never flat- 
tered himself that he was cast in an heroic mould ; but when 
accident thrust on him this opportunity, the decisive factor 
was the feeling that he would be showing a yellow streak if 
he did not make the most of it. He frankly believed it was 
plain rawness in business men to bar his kind from their 
councils. He cherished no conceit that the world would be 
better off under an autocracy of theory ; but he was sure that 
more cross-fertilization between theory and practice would 
improve both. He had never been guilty of the pedantic ar- 
rogance which assumes that practical men are an inferior 
caste. On the contrary, his acquaintance with Chicago bus- 
iness men had taught him to admire and envy the superiority 
of certain powers in them which usually remain rudimentary 
in the scholarly type. At the same time, he had no doubt 
that the two kinds of people needed each other, and that all 
the world's work would be done better after they had ar- 
ranged a more intimate division of labor. 

A precocious approach to this view had determined 
Edgerly's choice of a career. His father was a prominent 
New England cotton manufacturer who had hoped that his 
son would succeed him in the business. Edgerly had left 
Yale, however, with the uppermost thought that it did not 
call for the whole of a man to deal with the problems of 
things, especially since we had scarcely made a decent be- 
ginning with the problems of people. The only net gain 
upon this conclusion that he could credit to the years of his 
apprenticeship as tutor, was the conviction that he had never 
yet learned anything worth knowing. Without a distinct 

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Dotion of what the Germans might do to make his previous 
abortive studies fruitful, he got the idea that they were nearer 
than anybody else to the sources of knowledge; and he re- 
solved to make a pilgrimage to them in quest of a scientific 
method and program. 

Shortly after their arrival in Berlin, while each was trying 
to convince himself that he was not desperately homesick, 
Edgerly and Halleck had met one Sunday morning at the 
American chapel. Although they had never competed in 
the same events, they recognized each other as former mem- 
bers of rival athletic organizations. Under the circumstances 
this was an immediate bond of union. They soon discovered 
deeper congenialities, and the upshot was that they became 
almost inseparable during their whole stay in the city. Al- 
though the one made theology and the other philosophy his 
center of operations, they found that their specific interests 
led close to the same path. With the exception of a semester 
which Edgerly devoted to experimental psychology with 
Wundt in Leipsic, there was no time when they were not 
hearing one or more courses together. If they did not reach 
identical opinions, common factors in establishing their 
methods of thinking were the lectures of Pfleiderer, and 
Weiss, and Paulsen, and Harnack, and Schmoller, and Wag- 
ner and Simmel. 

The two men left Berlin with the feeling that they had 
learned to look at the ranges of truth which it would be their 
business to study, through the best instruments that had been 
constructed up to date. In some respects they were more 
oppressed by their own ignorance than when they left Amer- 
ica, but by the same token they were in less danger of ob- 
session by other people's presumed knowledge. They had 
become acquainted with the rules of evidence, and with the 
state of the testimony at present in hand, and they believed it 
would be their own fault if they did not give a good account 
of themselves as independent thinkers. They felt strong in 
acquaintance not only with their own powers and limitations, 
but also with the resources of other specialists, and how both 
to consider their opinions with due reserve and to draw on 
them for reinforcement. 

There was nothing of the transcendentalist or the ascetic 
about Edgerly. He was an honest feeder. He kept himself 
trained as fine as a Fort Sheridan trooper. He could play 

152 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MORALIST 



as lustily as he could work, and he had never let himself go 
stale by skimping his quota of amusement ; but he made no 
pretense of not taking himself seriously when he was on 
duty. 

Not in his class room only, but whenever he was called 
upon for opinions in public or private, Edgerly was governed 
by modest assurance that he had a mission. He did not im- 
pose himself as an oracle. He did not whine if the world 
failed to dance to his piping. He simply compelled himself 
to be genuine. He put his best into his tale of work, and 
turned it into the common stock, without wondering that 
the world seldom took it at his own appraisal. He believed 
that every piece of real work is a part of the world's struc- 
tural material ; but he was cheerfully resigned to the economy 
which consumes most of the material without awarding in- 
dividual credits. 

It was in this spirit that Edgerly consented to act as emer- 
gency man for the Patriarchs. He was certain that he saw 
some things truer than they did, and that it would promote 
social progress if they could be convinced of their error. Not 
that he ever expected anybody to be convinced of any- 
thing by one argument. But these men were symptoms 
of social conditions. He would apply a first treatment to 
the symptoms, and as it was sure to be followed up from time 
to time by other men, along with treatment that went un- 
derneath the symptoms, the appropriate effects might ap- 
pear in their sons' or their sons' sons' generation. The tor- 
ments that he endured early in the evening were real enough, 
but it was only half true that he took them as the proper 
penalty of his presumption. That was his cynical version of 
the incident. In reality, after recovering from the dispiriting 
effects of the first impressions, he did not dread his task. He 
was simply tortured by the pains of inhibition while waiting 
for the work to begin. 

After the intermission of ten minutes following the coffee, 
the company rearranged itself at the call of the gavel. 

The President was one of the younger members of the Club, 
and was rather exceptional in his fluency of the sort of speech 
which makes a successful presiding officer. The circum- 
stances of the change of program had of course been thor- 
oughly discussed, and it only remained to make formal an- 
nouncement of the withdrawal and of the rearrangement, in 

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THE MORALIST 



terms as considerate as possible of the feelings of the substi- 
tute. The President's tact was equal to the occasion. His 
expressions of sympathy for the expected speaker, and of re- 
gret that he was unable to be present, were no more com- 
plimentary than his references to the courtesy of the gentle- 
man who had consented to act as alternate. After facetious 
felicitation of the company upon the superfluity of going out- 
side of Chicago for enlightenment upon any subject, he con- 
cluded: — "I have therefore great pleasure in presenting one 
of our numerous exceptions to the rule that remoteness is 
necessary to reputation: — Our fellow townsman Professor 
Edgerly, who will speak on the topic: 'An Academic View of 
Labor Problems/ " 

Because the President had especially emphasized the in- 
debtedness of the Club to the speaker for his acceptance of 
the invitation upon such short notice, his reception was as 
cordial as though he had been a first choice. In restless re- 
lief from restraint, Edgerly started at once with a partially 
chastened sample of his volubility. 

"Mr. President and Gentlemen : — The diplomatic but dep- 
recatory deliverances of the amiable presiding genius of the 
evening, reduced to relatively intelligible terms of the ver- 
nacular, advertise the unterrified local opinion that it would be 
treason to Chicago to admit that a casual half hour's stroll, in 
any precinct of the city or its suburbs, would fail to encounter 
one or more average citizens qualified to assume at a mo- 
ment's notice, and to adorn indefinitely, the position of a 
cabinet officer. 

"While subscribing without reservation to the general per- 
tinency of this equally patriotic and perspicacious sentiment, 
a decent respect for the opinions of mankind constrains me to 
present my humble commiserations that Providence has cast 
your lot in such facile proximity to a population of telephone- 
order duplicates. 

"Though this is demonstrably not my fault, it is unde- 
niably your misfortune, and I am painfully conscious of my 
incompetence to mitigate its severity. Indeed, I have grave 
fears that my obligations as a faithful friend will require me 
to accentuate the calamity. 

"At the outset I have encountered evidence that my first 
well meant endeavors to forestall embarrassment have gone 
wrong. After the importunity of your representatives had 

154 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MORALIST 



partially overcome my reluctance to function as the active 
agent of your present discomfiture, my final surrender to their 
insistence was conditioned upon a single stipulation. It was 
nominated in the bond that I should be free from every actual 
or implied restraint upon proclamation of the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth, as the spirit might give me 
utterance. 

"That this covenant affected your committee as sinister in 
motive and portentous in prospect is patent in their unusual 
precaution of excluding the representatives of the press. My 
first use of the liberty guaranteed under the terms of our 
agreement must be in protest against the superfluous and re- 
grettable innovation. If it should be adopted into the perma- 
nent policy of the Patriarchs' Club, its effects would be mourn- 
fully deleterious upon the high and civilizing art of after- 
dinner speaking. Ever foremost among the spurs to achieve- 
ment in this laudable field of endeavor, is the promise of 
learning from the morning papers what unsuspected poten- 
cies of variation, and inversion, not to say of gyroscopic ter- 
giversation, are latent in the most laboriously lucid periods, 
when quickened by the magic touch of repertorial and man- 
agerial amplification ! 

"Let me, however, hasten to relieve your minds, gentle- 
men, of any apprehension which you may share with your 
committee, that I come to you with inflammatory intentions. 
On the contrary, I would if possible warm your hearts with a 
breath from that atmosphere of serene seclusion, of sterilized 
segregation, of judicial deliberation, of imperturbable repose, 
of catholic comprehension and of pacific moderation, which 
every one who conjures his facts from a perfervid imagina- 
tion recognizes as the calm perpetual environment of life in 
the up-to-date university. 

"Proceeding then without dilatory preliminaries directly 
to the topic of the evening, I have no doubt you have already 
remarked the nice discretion with which, in marking off the 
boundaries of my discussion, I have employed the definitive 
capabilities of the indefinite article. By the phrase "an aca- 
demic view," instead of "the academic view," the subject is 
lifted at once from the low plane and petty province of prac- 
tical politics, to the high altitude and large scope of broad 
generalization. Indeed, gentlemen, such a phrase as "the 
academic view" would be not only solecistic in effect, but it 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MORALIST 



would be still more inaccurate in fact. If a conjunction of 
opinion corresponding to the phrase should ever supervene, 
it would indicate either concurrent paralysis of academic in- 
dividuality, or such wholesale conquests of the hitherto un- 
discoverable that the occupation of universities would hence- 
forth be gone. At the present moment, no subject under the 
sun occurs to me, from the nebular hypothesis to denatured 
spelling, in connection with which such an omen as unanim- 
ity among academicians is conceivable." 

If he had been talking to the Commercial Travellers' Asso- 
ciation, Edgerly would have given freer rein to verbal exuber- 
ance. In deference to the dignity of his present audience 
however, he had kept within the requirements of compara- 
tive circumspection, and he was 1 approaching transition to a 
more serious manner. 

"Yet, I must call your attention in the first place, gentle- 
men, to the paradoxical fact that there is nevertheless an 
academic point of view, which deserves your unremitting 
consideration. This is the first plain truth which I reserved 
freedom to expose. It is radical enough, when all its impli- 
cations are reviewed, but still not so instantaneously subver- 
sive that it could not safely have been intrusted to the re- 
porters. 

"During the recess a few moments ago, your President re- 
marked to me that I did not appear quite like myself this 
evening; that I betrayed symptoms of nerves. I admitted 
it, and pointed out that the thought of addressing such a com- 
pany as this was a legitimate excuse for nervousness. 'Pooh !' 
he replied, 'there's no call to be nervous here. It's the most 
ignorant crowd you could get together. Not a man of them 
knows anything but his own business!' 

"At first shock I was blinded by the irreverence of this 
apparent slander, and I could not have been induced to make 
myself an accomplice after the fact by repeating it, if I had 
not presently detected its subtle symbolism. It was a pain- 
less method of giving me my finish by a stab that could not 
be parried. The cold steel was so adroitly thrust into my 
soul that at first I did not know I was hurt. But my eyes 
were opened and I saw the worst. Even on this plane of 
amenity, the President could not repress his impulse to glorify 

156 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MORALIST 



his own class at the expense of mine. Translating the sinu- 
ous irony into direct declaration, this was what he said: — 
'Well may a man of your class tremble here. These are the 
really learned men. They know enough to know their own 
business. They do not pursue the academic folly of trying 
to know everybody's business beside their own.' 

"Let us not misunderstand each other, gentlemen. We 
are equally aware that among practical men a proposition 
is damned, beyond hope of probation or purgatory or re- 
demption, the moment it is branded with the defamatory epi- 
thet 'academic. ' Yet I venture before you, gentlemen, with 
the confident affirmation that this customary resort to lin- 
guistic lynch-law is neither intelligent nor moral nor re- 
spectable. 

"A practical proposition is merely small change of the cur- 
rent legal tender; while an academic proposition is a first 
mortgage on the property, and a long time investment. 

"An academic proposition is like government two's, or still 
more like a title to growing timber ; perfectly good, but in a 
panicky market not always convertible. A practical proposi- 
tion is perishable goods. It is worth what it is worth, but its 
value can be realized only through immediate consumption, 
or transformation into more permanent capital. 

"A practical proposition is a stake driven at a given spot. 
An academic proposition is a survey of the continent. 

"Now there is one large academic view which controls, if 
it does not harmonize the confusion of variant views. This 
comprehensive academic view is that we must all consent at 
last to run our line fence not solely with reference to the stake 
we have driven, but also with due respect to the general 
survey. 

"Dropping metaphor, and speaking straight to the point, 
the one essential idea which it is the inalienable duty of aca- 
demic life to project into practical life, is that we do not put 
the whole of our mind or our conscience into our work until 
we are able to fit that work loyally into the whole range of re- 
lations, the whole system of cause and effect, in which it plays 
a part. 

"To explain fully what this means would require a com- 
plete treatise on the whole modern conception of life. In a 
word it means this : — No man's place in life belongs to him 
in a sense that can be covered, by a calculus which makes his 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MORALIST 



own private interests the decisive factor. Each of us deserves 
or does not deserve his place and his fortune, whether it is 
high or low, much or little, according to the ratio of his con- 
tribution in that place to the developing interests of the en- 
tire human family. 

"Putting this in terms of labor problems, for illustration, 
no man is loyal to the logic of life, who allows his position in 
a conflict between capital and labor to be decided beyond ap- 
peal by the probable effects upon himself or his class. No 
man has a right to act as though he and his class were privi- 
leged to be the weighers and gaugers, applying their own 
standard to the interests of others. On the contrary, life is 
the measure, and we and our interests are material to be 
measured. 

"The last estimate we can reach of the total effect of alter- 
native courses of conduct upon all the interests of present and 
future generations, is the rightful arbiter of our attitude in a 
labor quarrel. It is not this year's nor this decade's wages or 
profits alone ; it is not alone a possible modification of business 
policies, or redistribution of managerial responsibility; it is 
not alone the probable influence upon the permanence or 
proportions of industrial classes. It is all of these together, 
calculated to their last discoverable effects. The only cri- 
terion worthy of a man of brains and conscience, is the most 
disinterested judgment that can be formed of the probable 
influence of his conduct upon the common human enterprise 
of clearing the way for general progress in material and men- 
tal and moral well-being. 

"Yes, gentlemen, I am perfectly conscious of the magni- 
tude of my offense. In spite of everything, I have made com- 
mon cause with that despicable and preposterous pretender, 
the academic proposition. I have done it deliberately, and I 
have gloried in it ! 

"I remember that it is more than archaic, in these incredu- 
lous days, to assume the minatory office of the prophet; but 
for good measure, to assure my conviction in case there may 
be some loop-hole for escape on technicalities from the mer- 
ited penalties of my previous guilt, I repeat and reaffirm. 
There will be no secure industrial peace till the conflicts of 
classes abandon the policy of settlement by clash of hostile 
force, and substitute the arbitrament of dispassionate inquiry 
into the conditions of human progress. 

158 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MORALIST 



"Every truth of any consequence that we now regard as 
settled, has had to fight its way up from the despised and re- 
jected status of an academic proposition. The human race 
had stumbled through much the larger part of its elapsed 
time before the multiplication table was adopted into the cate- 
gory of useful knowledge. It was only at a relatively recent 
stage of growth that people recognized the necessity of be- 
lieving that twice two are always four. For a long time be- 
fore they finally went into practical operation, Magna Charta, 
and the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence 
and the Emancipation Proclamation, were academic proposi- 
tions in the mouths of visionaries and fanatics. Men but lit- 
tle past middle life remember when antiseptic surgery was 
an academic proposition too ridiculous to be treated decently 
by conservative practitioners. Today we do not even dare to 
have ourselves manicured or barbered, unless previously guar- 
anteed that conformity with the prescriptions of chemistry 
and bacteriology has rendered the operation innocuous. The 
day will come, and I do not believe it is in the remote dis- 
tance, when this academic view of labor problems will be com- 
mon knowledge. A conflict between capital and labor is never 
simply a question of dollars and cents, or of immediate ways 
and means, between employers and employees. A conflict 
between capital and labor is a re-examination of the validity 
and the virility of our whole underlying system of thinking ! 

"But I have in a way anticipated a later consideration. 
Microscopic analysis of my plan of argument would discover 
that at present these applications to labor problems are merely 
incidental and illustrative. The substance of my first point 
may be recapitulated in a sentence: — Judged by the stand- 
ards of civilization, and not of classes, business in general to- 
day is short of the academic collateral necessary to support its 
circulation !" 



The men surrounding Edgerly were not of a type likely to 
betray by outward signs any conclusive evidence of assent or 
dissent. If they had been bored, their manner would have 
told it, and Edgerly's worst fear had been that he might not 
be nearly enough equal to the occasion to hold attention. 
Approval or disapproval was a quite secondary matter, if in- 
terest enough could be maintained to keep thought on the 
subject. 

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THE MORALIST 



So far, however, there was no doubt about the listening; 
and the general appearance of settling into comfortable posi- 
tions, and of surmise about what was coming, assured Edgerly 
that he was at least not yet counted out. At the same time the 
quizzical expression on most of the faces left him uncertain 
how attention was divided between his thought and his per- 
formance. 

In the moment's pause before he took up his second point, 
Edgerly could not help wondering how far he ought to com- 
pare himself with the violinist whose bravura execution ex- 
torts ambiguous applause, although the semi-assured artistic 
insight of the audience suspects that an exhibition of tone- 
taming technique is trifling with its demand for real music. 
But having whetted interest, he was prepared to rest his case 
less on the manner and more on the matter. His main pur- 
pose was not to win credit for himself, but to blaze a path for 
the conclusion that other ideas are abroad in the world, be- 
side those prevalent in business, about the relations of busi- 
ness to life ; that these ideas are backed not merely by the spirit 
of selfishness, but also by the spirit of truthfulness ; and that 
the ideas are bound sooner or later to win their share of in- 
fluence upon the course of social change. When he resumed, 
his tone, if not his choice of language, was in striking con- 
trast with that in which he had begun. It was deliberate and 
colloquial, but it was quite as carefully calculated. 

"So much for the first point. The second is like unto it. 
Yet there are differences which justify a doubt whether in this 
connection the absence of reporters is an unrelieved disaster ; 
not on account of anything I shall actually say, but because 
the efflorescence of their poetic license might be over-stimu- 
lated by the associations. 

"The second proposition is this: — If there exists, in the 
conservative index expwrgatorius of things prohibited, a term 
of reproach more irrevocably foreordained to rouse the wrath 
and fiery indignation of the practical man than that long 
and innocently suffering adjective 'academic/ it is the in- 
famous epithet 'socialistic. ' 

"Before commenting on this proposition I must claim the 
privilege of my promised freedom of speech, for a word of 
personal explanation. I am not a socialist. I do not believe 
in socialism. I have no intention of undertaking, here or else- 

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BETWEEN ERAS 



THE MORALIST 



where, a defense of socialism ; but I am obliged to say, gen- 
tlemen, that from the point of view which I am representing 
this evening, if there is anything in the shape of social men- 
ace less defensible than socialism, it is the typical business 
man's attitude toward socialism! Your peremptory ostra- 
cism and outlawry of the subject either impeach your good 
will, or they demonstrate your woeful deficiency of infor- 
mation. 

"If the modern lords of business could command the 
services of the Bourbon lettres de cachet, metaphorically at 
any rate socialism would forthwith be immured in the deep- 
est dungeons of the Bastille, to be released only by the Revo- 
lution! If your capitalistic class-prejudice can once force 
upon a proposition the convicts' garb of that attainting at- 
tributive 'socialistic,' you go on your way rejoicing that there 
is not enough left in favor of the idea to warrant a hearing 
by the Board of Pardons !" 

Under other circumstances, in spite of the bespoken free- 
dom of speech, the Patriarchs would have set down this plain 
language as an abuse of liberty. They would have denied 
that they objected to calling a spade a spade, but their posi- 
tion was that it turns liberty into license to denounce an hon- 
est spade as an instrument of oppression. Edgerly's relation 
to David Lyon however, made him in a sense one of them- 
selves, and although he had at a stroke put himself under 
suspicion, his eccentricity could be considered by the Patri- 
archs with less heat than if it had been wholly an attack 
from without. Edgerly's strategy was to do just enough jolly- 
ing to insure attention, with realism enough in his allusions 
to facts to show that the nonsense also carried a literal argu- 
ment. After a pause to allow the indictment to take effect, 
he returned to his text, with no sign that he was aware of 
having transgressed the commonplace. 

"Judged from the academic standpoint, the behavior of 
the typical business man toward socialism is on a level with 
the child's fear of the dark, or the hysterics of the farmer's 
horse at meeting an automobile. The horse indeed has the 
better excuse. The auto is a real menace, while socialism is 
a bogy. 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MORALIST 



"It is absurd, in the first place, to shy at the word socialism, 
because it means so many things that it means nothing. 

"If you should put all the current definitions of socialism 
into a hat — by the way, to hold them it would have to be big 
enough to fit the Sphinx — and draw out a dozen, the chances 
are that they would be as irreconcilable with one another as a 
like number of definitions of orthodoxy, selected by the same 
method. The world is girdled by an alternating current of 
conflicting orthodoxies, from the Mikado's priests of Shinto 
to the apostles of Brigham Young. You have an orthodoxy 
or a socialism wherever you have a defender of any faith who 
cares to use either name. The consequence is that when you 
have said 'orthodoxy' or 'socialism' you have merely applied 
a general name to a heterogeneous diversity of things which 
can no more be disposed of in one wholesale judgment, 
than you can treat all corporations as uniformly good or bad, 
or all laws as equally' wise or foolish. 

"For his philanthropic efforts at the town which bears his 
name, Mr. Pullman would have been entirely within his 
rights if he had called himself a socialist ; and he could have 
made out a much stronger claim to justify his appropriation 
of the term than many species of everything and nothingists 
who apply it to themselves. On the other hand, there is a 
socialism which in its practical effects is in no way distin- 
guishable from anarchism. By your treatment of the word 
'socialism' therefore, you damn with a common label a vast 
variety of ideas and efforts between these wide extremes, some 
of them more good than bad, some more bad than good, but all 
containing a residuum of saving grace. And you are uncon- 
scious of anything wrong, until you consent to take a look at 
the anomaly from the academic point of view! Although 
there are orthodoxies and socialisms that outrage all reason, 
it is pitiable logic, and still more pestilential policy, to taboo 
all religious and social inquiry not mortgaged in advance to 
our own conclusions." 

The knitted brows, and the alert watch which his hearers 
were keeping on him, showed Edgerly that they at least 
thought he was worth notice. He had deliberately used up 
the bulk of his time guarding his approach, in the hope that 
the way would be open for a single sharp attack. It was now 
a question of making the most of the time that remained to 

162 



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THE MORALIST 



deliver his real message. He made another change to a di- 
rect, staccato manner, which said even more plainly than his 
words, "So much for side issues, now to the point." 

"But, after all, these two propositions were merely to muz- 
zle inconvenient watch dogs at the gate, before I could enter 
your premises on my main errand. The really important out- 
look upon labor problems, from an academic point of view, 
is indicated in my third proposition, namely : — 

"It is the presumption of business that its duty is done 
when it has played the dollar game for all it is worth. On 
the contrary it is the business of business to help mark the 
limits where the game ceases to be worth the candle, and to 
discover how so much of the game as is worth playing may be 
improved in the interest of general welfare. 

"Everything that I have said so far would be equally in 
order, with slight changes of details, if I were talking to an 
audience of labor leaders. The present proposition also has 
its applications to the labor side of the problem ; but it would 
be a waste of time to devote any attention in this presence to 
that aspect of the case. You surely need no help from me in 
detecting the sins of organized labor. I am not now con- 
cerned with motes in the eyes of the absent, but with beams 
in the party vision represented by the present company. 

"If I were asked to pass judgment upon the merits of the 
particular issue that embarrasses Chicago today, and to de- 
clare an opinion about the respective duties of the contending 
forces, I should most emphatically decline. A third party 
could properly pass upon the specific questions involved only 
after full presentation of the case by both contestants had 
furnished the means for a judicial decision. In what I am 
saying I am in no sense prejudging the balance of right and 
wrong between capital and labor in the present instance. I 
am exhibiting certain universal features of labor problems, as 
they appear from an academic point of view. The question 
arises at your post of duty, not at mine, What consideration 
do these general factors deserve in the pending conflict? 

"Viewed then not merely in the perspective of the day's 
work, nor as measured by the interests of a given investment, 
but as an incident of the universal conflict of class-interests, 
every labor problem is a test of the strength of the presump- 
tion that human institutions are subject to change. 

163 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MORALIST 



"It is not invariably true, but with certain exceptions cap- 
ital today stoutly maintains the negative of that presumption. 
The exceptions are partly accidental, partly special cases of 
aggressiveness, and partly exceptions only on the surface. 

"The sullenness and the stubbornness of labor conflicts 
cannot be accounted for by the value of the prizes immedi- 
ately at stake. These are usually mere trifles in themselves. 
The real issue is the ultimate shifting of the balance of power, 
in case ground should be gained in the direction of more in- 
fluence by the labor factor. 

"Capital does not usually care a rap about a mere matter of 
a few cents more in the pay envelope, or a few minutes less 
in the working week. If laborers would accept such conces- 
sions as acts of grace by employers, and therewith an end of 
it, these sops could often be tossed to employees and expensive 
struggles avoided. 

"The persistence of labor and the resistance of capital are 
for far deeper reasons. Whether intelligently or instinctively, 
each side is aware that something much more important is in 
the balance, namely, gain or loss of right to share in the con- 
trol of the capital, and in distributing its profits. 

"The instinct of employees is to distribute, and of employ- 
ers to centralize the control of capital ; and there will always 
be labor problems until a permanent balance of these two 
forces is established. 

"The trouble which I took at the outset to challenge the 
letters of marque and reprisal under which you are accus- 
tomed to use those sharp-edged weapons, 'academic' and 'so- 
cialistic/ was entirely a precautionary measure with reference 
to the present point. All the different species of social move- 
ments, from the most inoffensive to the most dangerous, which 
you attempt to put out of commission by force of that oppro- 
brious epithet 'socialistic,' have one characteristic in com- 
mon. Their fundamental position is directly contrary to 
that of capitalism. They frankly maintain the affirmative 
of the presumption that human institutions are subject to 
change. 

"You justify the traditions of your class by pointing to the 
foolishness of many of the changes proposed. But until wis- 
dom and skill have been gained by honest experiment with 
the conditions to be controlled, stupidity is the common lot 



of mankind. 



164 



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THE MORALIST 



"Whatever may be the merits or demerits of the particular 
issues involved in a given case, either party to a labor con- 
flict puts itself in the wrong, if its position virtually antago- 
nizes the principle of social change. Readjustment of social 
conditions is not violence of life, but the law of life. 

"Progress is the net outcome of life simply because the in- 
ertia of vested interests cannot resist the momentum of hu- 
man destiny. My argument is that it is the business of bus- 
iness men not simply to hold things as they are, but to be 
leaders in adapting social institutions to changing conditions. 

"To give my third proposition its full force, I must ask you 
to consider it a moment from another angle. Every labor 
problem runs back not only to the question, Is there any thing 
new to do about social organization ? but to the still more rad- 
ical question, Is there any thing new to think about our in- 
herited institutions? 

"Here too, as a rule, we find capital defending the negative, 
and labor contending for the affirmative. The visible possi- 
bilities of new thought range from plaintive pleas for transla- 
tion of the primary rules of homely honesty into the practices 
of business, to philosophies that in a generation or two would 
turn the world back to savagery. This is the peculiar oppor- 
tunity for the other of the two weapons of extermination to 
which I have referred. Business intolerance jumbles these 
miscellaneous propositions under indiscriminate suspicion, 
invokes its own peculiar 'law of reinforced defense,' and de- 
crees their banishment to the hopeless region 'academic' 

"But frankly, gentlemen, there has never been an age of 
the world whose prepossessions have not been revised by its 
successors. There is not the faintest probability that our era 
will be an exception to the rule. On the contrary, the change 
from the tallow dips and fluid lamps of half a century ago, 
to interior and exterior electric illumination, is but a feeble 
analogy for the intellectual light that has been shed, mean- 
while, upon every subject of human knowledge. The aspect 
of the world and all it contains is presenting more rapid and 
radical transformations to our minds than to any previous 
generation. The man or the class that pins faith upon petri- 
fying society in its present forms, is due for as impotent a 
bout with fate as though he staked his hopes on keeping the 
face of nature as it is in January unchanged through the 
month of June. 

165 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MORALIST 



"Nor are we at a loss for indications of some of the changes 
immediately to come — indeed the modifications have already 
gone so far in men's thoughts that we could hardly be over- 
taken by surprise at any speed of transmuting them into 
action. 

"To cite a single instance, closely related to our subject: 
The world is rapidly rediscovering its superiority to its wealth. 
For three hundred years we have been forgetting that wealth 
is for the sake of life, and falling under the illusion that life 
is for the sake of wealth. We have created artificial legal 
persons incorporating the abstract principle of accumulation. 
These artificial persons inevitably assert their supremacy not 
only over their servants but over their masters. They become 
ends in themselves, to which all men must be tributary. The 
fight of labor against capital in corporate forms appears to 
be a fight of one group of men against another. In its deeper 
reaches it turns out to be a fight of laboring men for manhood 
in general, against the devouring power of capital. 

"When capital is made into a legal person, the only possible 
attitudes of natural persons toward it are for and against. 
There can be but one crime against capital ; namely, conduct 
tending to diminish its quantity or its value. 

"Behind all petty or important incidents of labor conflicts, 
therefore, is the antecedent question of choice between ruling 
conceptions of life. The present social situation confronts 
men of thought with the moral dilemma: — 'Choose ye this 
day whom you will serve. Shall it be men or capital?' One 
of these aims must slave to the other. They are not, and 
never can be coordinate, because the one is personal, the 
other impersonal. The strategic point in the whole social 
struggle is at the parting of the ways, the one leading to more 
capitalization, the other to more humanization, as the termi- 
nal of social effort. Expressed more literally, the key to the 
social struggle, in its present stage, is the question: — Shall 
the social aim be to use men for the sake of capital, or to use 
capital for the sake of men? 

"I am not impugning motives. I am not making a parti- 
san plea. I am not catering to the popular demand for sen- 
sations. Under present conditions especially, and even under 
ordinary circumstances, I should not feel at liberty to say in 
public precisely what I am saying here. As a privileged 
communication, however, I am confiding to you one of the 

166 



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THE MORALIST 



aspects which our social problems present from an academic 
point of view. In spite of the apparent egotism of the claim, 
I venture to add that our society does not at present afford a 
standpoint more favorable than the university outlook to just 
and penetrating judgments of social tendencies. 

"In a word then, gentlemen, my message to you, as wield- 
ers of power in business, is that you have not well read the 
signs of the times which indicate the function by which you 
might best serve your fellow men. In a world whose law is 
change, and in an era in which the operation of the law is 
gaining accelerated motion, there is peculiar demand for your 
friendly cooperation with the principle of progress. 

"Whether we like it or not, the world is every hour generat- 
ing a higher pressure of ambition to architect its own fortune. 
So far as we can see, the era that we are entering is to be dis- 
tinguished by the dominance of a distinctly modern temper 
toward human conditions. It is to be an era of determina- 
tion not to be content with such improvement as accident 
may bring, but to create improvement by inventing means to 
satisfy social demands. You may antagonize this tendency, 
but it will surely triumph over you. It has the strongest im- 
pulses of humanity behind it, and they cannot be perma- 
nently arrested by the interests of a class. If you will work 
with the social movement, you may do more than any other 
fraction of society to insure a maximum of wisdom and a 
minimum of foolishness in future programs of improvement. 

"The type of men endowed with the most splendid talents 
for bringing things to pass must sooner or later discover that 
the largest scope for their powers cannot be found in the para- 
mount service of capital ; there is a wider radius of action in 
higher loyalty to the general weal. 

"The manhood suffrage of this new era of social adapta- 
tion will be universal freedom of investigation. 

"No dominant interest has ever permitted investigation 
which questioned the rightfulness of its domination. 

"Vested interest is vested prejudice; but where prejudice 
is law truth is an outlaw. 

"Whatever the immediate issues of labor problems, they 
are incidents in the process of repealing the common law of 
the passing era, that it is treason to society to question the jus- 
tice of the constitution and by-laws of capitalism. 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE MORALIST 



"In the new era it will be common law that no interest may 
estop investigation of anything that is affected by a public 
interest. In the new era it will be common law that the whole 
force of society shall guarantee investigation of every condi- 
tion which obstructs general progress. 

"The day on which the leaders of business unite with the 
leaders of labor to promote the incorporation of these two 
principles into the fundamental law, with pledges to abide by 
the results, will mark also the final end of industrial wars. 



16S 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



XI 
THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 

"Everything that the gentleman said about capital would 
have been equally true in itself and equally irrelevant to 
the question at issue, if it had been alleged of the atmos- 
phere and the sunlight, instead of capital." 



THE slang dictionary has no phrase for the effect of Ed- 
gerly's talk upon the Patriarchs, unless we summon the 
aid of mixed metaphor and call it a heated frost. 

If Goliath had been surrounded by an atmosphere that 
changed pebbles to soap-bubbles before they hit, the shep- 
herd boy would probably not have cut much of a figure in 
subsequent history. 

While a pelting with vapor pills may not jeopardize life, 
liberty nor estate, it tends to compromise the dignity and agi- 
tate the sensibilities of the victim. 

Even an experienced literary critic would have been puzzled 
if called upon to sort out and apportion the different ele- 
ments of Edgerly's talk, from permissible to proscribed 
sarcasm, from solid argument to excursions of fancy, and 
from innocent matter-of-fact to offensive insinuation. The 
Patriarchs were not prepared for such classification. It was 
a question of total impression. If their composite reaction 
had reported itself in the most guarded form, the terms would 
have been "ill-judged" and "inappropriate." An unedited 
version of the feelings of the majority would have declared 
that the speech as a whole was an exhibition of idiotic con- 
ceit, and a gratuitous insult to the Club. 

Responsibility for the decencies of the occasion fell rather 
heavily upon the guests. However their opinions may have 
been divided, they felt indebted to their hosts for a unique 
entertainment, and when Edgerly was done they furnished 
applause enough partially to cover his retreat. 

It was an awkward moment for the President. He had 
never faced a more delicate situation. He had to guard the 
proprieties toward the guest, and yet he must represent the 
dignity of the organization. He even feared that his effort 
to preserve the balance might move some irascible member 

173 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



to make a scene. If he had not been in the chair, he would 
himself have been disposed to break a lance with Edgerly, and 
he had no doubt that others might be more accurately de- 
scribed as ready to break the offender with a lance. The 
faint demonstration as Edgerly finished left the chairman 
little time to adjust his reflections, and he rose without feel- 
ing quite sure what he was going to say. He began in the 
manner of a man testing thin ice : — 

"As the chief guest of the evening intimated, at the open- 
ing of his remarks, he gave our committee fair warning that 
what he was likely to say would tax the tolerance of the Club. 
As to the occasion for this warning, I take it that no one is 
inclined to accuse him of not making good. While the opin- 
ions which the speaker has expressed are not altogether unfa- 
miliar, it could not be expected that men who are acquainted 
with the world should find themselves able to regard them as 
conclusive or even plausible. Indeed, we cannot offer higher 
praise than by expressing our regret that the admirable skill 
which the speaker has exhibited in advocating untenable be- 
liefs is not enlisted in the service of a better cause. While I 
am sure that the members of the Club are not convinced by 
the eloquence to which they have listened, it is possible that 
they are temporarily silenced. I wait your pleasure there- 
fore, gentlemen, with reference to further discussion. " 

Mr. Dexter was on his feet instantly, and although the 
chairman was doubtful whether Dexter could keep his tem- 
per, he was glad to yield the floor, and to enjoy a reprieve 
from responsibility. 

Both in business and in politics, Dexter had an honorably 
earned national reputation. Nobody rated him as a broad 
man, but he was fiercely dogmatic in all his opinions. He 
was known by his more intimate acquaintances as careful 
rather than safe. His views were so restricted that his judg- 
ment was never reliable except within the range of well estab- 
lished precedent. In another age he might have been a martyr 
to any cause that he espoused. His loyalty to his principles 
was beyond suspicion, but the sources of his convictions were 
so confined that he often weakened his own side of a con- 
troversy more by furnishing grounds for the charge of fanat- 
icism, than he could injure the other side by the strength of 
his attacks. 

174 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



If Edgerly had been in collusion with fate to furnish point 
to his argument, he could not have been better served than 
by the presence of Dexter. The same provocation would not 
have worried any other man present into betraying ocular 
proof of the partiality of the capitalistic point of view. 

The Patriarchs were by no means exceptionally narrow 
men. On the contrary, in comparison with the average of 
their fellow citizens they were eminent for intelligence and 
catholicity. They were simply cases under the universal law 
that all men are affected by the bias of their peculiar interests. 
Edgerly's whole argument might have been compressed into 
the theorem that the bias of the capitalistic interest needs 
watching more than any other single factor in present social 
problems. 

If all the members of the Club except Dexter had spoken 
in their usual manner when addressing the public, the total 
effect would have gone far toward shifting the burden of proof 
back upon Edgerly. Their tone would have been so calm, 
their form of statement so fair, their references to the higher 
motives of life so sympathetic, that it would have seemed like 
malicious aspersion to suspect them of undue influence by 
anti-social interests. Edgerly had implied no lack of respect 
for the good intentions and high character of the typical 
business man. His argument had dealt with the compelling 
power of capitalistic standards. He had pointed out that capi- 
tal must either command or obey, and he had claimed that 
wealth, not manhood is the dominant interest in our present 
social system. 

It was at once evident that Dexter was having difficulty in 
controlling his emotions. His face was tense. His eyes had 
the far-away look of a man in a trance. At first his breath 
was caught in hasty gulps. His voice was husky, or rather 
sibilant. His arms were busy with clutching, swinging, 
pushing motions, which had no meaning as gestures, but 
were merely involuntary means of discharging inconvenient 
nervous force. After the first few sentences his pitch trans- 
posed itself into a piercing falsetto, and then his gestures be- 
came the beating and slashing sort- that naturally accompany 
violent emotion. 

"I regret extremely," he began, "that there is any necessity 
for replying to the speaker of the evening. The circum- 
stances under which he came entitle him to our considera- 

175 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



tion. If he had failed to give forcible expression to his ideas, 
it would have been our duty to overlook his weakness, in view 
of the brief time at his disposal to collect his thoughts. I 
need not say that there has been no occasion for sympathy on 
that score. Rarely has a speaker before this club seemed so 
able to say precisely what he meant. 

"If the address to which we have listened had been con- 
fused, and if the doubtful views were merely implied in refer- 
ences that might have been misunderstood, it would be the 
dictate of courtesy to ignore them. Nothing of this sort is 
the case. The opinions to which we have listened were not 
incidental. They were the substance of the argument. Nor 
could they have been improvised for the occasion. They were 
evidently premeditated and deliberate. 

"Since this is the situation, there can be no impropriety in 
using the same freedom of speech which the gentleman re- 
served for himself. He has told us that business men have 
no use for academic ideas. Even after the sample of academic 
ideas which he has presented to our astonished gaze, I pre- 
sume he will wonder that we are of the same opinion still. 
He has ridiculed business men for not wasting their time on 
people who think they are serving the real world by telling 
what a glorious world it would be if wishes were horses, and 
if pretty sentiments were food, clothing, shelter and pin 
money. And yet I suppose he would think it very imperti- 
nent if we should ask him why academic men refuse to listen 
to inventors of perpetual motion, and people who demonstrate 
that the world is not round after all, and mind readers, and 
fortune tellers, and fakirs in general. 

"He has intimated that capital is the most suspicious char- 
acter outside the rogues' gallery. Capital has fed him all his 
life, capital has given him his education, capital keeps him, 
just as it directly or indirectly furnishes the support of every 
other man in the world, and now it is the final deliverance of 
academic wisdom that it is time for humanity to turn and 
smite its best friend! 

"Since the same penetrating perception that has given us 
this inspiring discovery has issued an injunction against tak- 
ing the name 'socialism' in vain, because it doesn't mean any- 
thing in particular, I will confine myself to language which 
we shall all understand. Whether it is the brute violence of 
the Chicago thug, who kills for gold, or the mystical blood- 

176 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



thirst of the Russian terrorist, who murders to shame the 
devil, or the pedantic egotism of the academic theorist, whose 
artful phraseology undermines respect for the fundamental 
institutions of society in order to advertise the superior qual- 
ity of his own intelligence, in each case alike this wanton, 
stupid, wicked assault upon social order is nothing polite nor 
tolerable that can be imagined. It is simply and solely despic- 
able and damnable anarchy! 

"There is always an explanation, if not an excuse, for the 
brute who commits a crime of violence. He is merely an 
animal, with none of the restraint of reason. But when the 
high priests of reason itself, the men who pose as arbiters of 
logical science and sanity, the men who are constantly rebuk- 
ing all the rest of the world for not taking lessons of them in 
thoroughness of investigation, and fairness of judgment, and 
caution of utterance — when these men join forces with the 
outbreaking enemies of society in propagating the most in- 
sidious incitement to destruction of the whole fabric of social 
order, then excuses vanish, and imagination exhausts itself 
in search for palliation, and language refuses to lend relief ! 

"For our own sake it would not be necessary to notice the 
fantastical and fatuous doctrines on which the changes have 
been rung in our ears this evening. They can do us no more 
hurt than scratching parlor matchas on the sides of our battle- 
ships. But these ideas are scattered broadcast among people 
who do not know how to protect themselves from the evils 
they produce. These pernicious parodies of truth are making 
honest labor irksome ; they are chasing contentment from the 
homes of prosperity; they are breeding vipers of class jeal- 
ousy ; they are teaching men that agitators and revolutionists 
and destroyers are the only good citizens. 

"We have been silent too long. Business men must enlist 
as crusaders to counteract the propaganda of confusion which 
ordinary criminals and extraordinary academic perverts are 
conspiring together to spread. We owe so much at least to 
our patriotism, our morality and our religion ! 

"Where, outside of the ravings of maniacs, do these accus- 
ers of business men find any presumptive grounds for their 
calumnies? What is this capital, which we have been informed 
this evening is the most dangerous factor in society ? In the 
face of such detraction, shall we who know what capital is, 
and what inestimable services it renders to mankind — shall 

177 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



we be silent, and allow these poisonous falsifications to cir- 
culate without protest? If the men who claim to be the 
guardians of truth, and the umpires of fairness, systemat- 
ically malign us, if they will not tell the people what they 
owe to us for making human comfort and happiness possible, 
then, not in the spirit of boasting, but in all sincerity and 
humility, we must instruct the people about the indispensa- 
ble part which we perform in making the conditions and in 
maintaining the processes that are necessary to human well- 
being and progress ! 

"What then is the plain truth about capital? The falsifi- 
cations which the tortuous imagination of these mischief- 
mongers has foisted upon the facts make people in general 
blink, and squint, and grow watery-eyed before they can bear 
the clear light of the truth. Capital is the beneficent fostering 
mother of all desirable human effort. Capital feeds the 
farmer while he is extracting from the soil food to insure the 
next campaign of human advancement. Capital supports 
every other wrestler with nature for new supplies of raw ma- 
terial for the myriad uses of mankind. Capital is the patient 
beast of burden, bearing nature's treasures to and fro, first 
to the points where other capital carries on human industry, 
in its labor of transformation, and then to other points where 
human needs are eager to satisfy themselves by consuming 
these products. Capital builds houses and cities, and subdues 
wildernesses, and explores the remote regions of the earth. 
Capital sends the messengers of commerce that unite widely 
separated peoples in the mutually beneficial bonds of trade. 
Capital girdles the earth with means of communication, and 
makes the sea and sky a continuous sounding board, to serve 
for instant exchange of news between the remotest men. Cap- 
ital organizes our systems of maintaining order, of preserving 
peace, of guaranteeing individual rights. Capital is the con- 
servator of the arts, the promoter of science, the sustainer of 
religion. Capital provides means for the ordinary man to 
earn his livelihood, and opens avenues for the careers of 
genius. Yes, I am compelled to say, capital is so unstinted 
in her benefactions that she even endows the contemptible 
ingrates who convert her bounty into a corruption fund, to 
mislead and betray their fellow-men ! 

"It will doubtless always be necessary for us to maintain 
hospitals, to alleviate the ills to which flesh is heir. We may 

178 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



never outgrow the necessity for asylums, for ministration to 
feeble minds. Among the burdens of the weak, which the 
strong may never escape the duty of helping to bear, we may 
cheerfully assume the obligation of patience and kindly tol- 
eration toward unavoidable ignorance. But, in the name of 
all the gods at once, it is our duty to unmask the treachery 
and the ignominy of those blind leaders of the blind who are 
the pampered agents of society to conduct gymnasiums for 
mental strength, and to guard the search lights of human 
understanding, but who prostitute their office and their op- 
portunity, who spread the contagion of depravity and law- 
lessness, who deny the truths and defy the obligations of 
civilized society ! Free thought is one thing. Cultivated im- 
becility is quite another thing. This incident ought to con- 
vince us that we have reached the boundary line where pa- 
tience ceases to be a virtue. There is no inheriting the earth 
for the sort of meekness that sits dumb, while flaunting false- 
hood triumphs over us. The men who are the main leverage 
of civilization must lift their voices loud and long enough to 
silence the betrayers of society!" 

Dexter sat down to the accompaniment of a silence still 
more void than the perfunctory punctuation of Edgerly's 
number in the program. Although Dexter had in a way voiced 
the opinions of the Patriarchs, he had not represented them, 
and the situation was much less satisfactory than if no reply 
had been made. The President was in more desperate straits 
than before, but he hailed it as a sign of hope when Joseph 
Morrison addressed the chair. 

In nine out of ten lists of the half-dozen leading merchants 
of the city, Mr. Morrison's name would be included. His ap- 
pearance would mark him as a scholar rather than a man of 
affairs. He seldom volunteered many words, either in public 
or in private, and this gave importance to the present excep- 
tion. He was much in demand for addresses on occasions 
that invited the utterance of ripe and successful experience. 
Although he protested that he had no qualifications for such 
duties, and although there was hesitation and almost diffi- 
dence in his manner whenever he undertook them, he never 
failed to impress his hearers as having spoken wisely and well. 
His own shyness, along with his reputation for unerring judg- 
ment in practical matters, was in effect a certificate of good 
faith. It appealed to the confidence of people who would have 

170 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



we be silent, and allow these poisonous falsifications to cir- 
culate without protest? If the men who claim to be the 
guardians of truth, and the umpires of fairness, systemat- 
ically malign us, if they will not tell the people what they 
owe to us for making human comfort and happiness possible, 
then, not in the spirit of boasting, but in all sincerity and 
humility, we must instruct the people about the indispensa- 
ble part which we perform in making the conditions and in 
maintaining the processes that are necessary to human well- 
being and progress ! 

"What then is the plain truth about capital? The falsifi- 
cations which the tortuous imagination of these mischief- 
mongers has foisted upon the facts make people in general 
blink, and squint, and grow watery-eyed before they can bear 
the clear light of the truth. Capital is the beneficent fostering 
mother of all desirable human effort. Capital feeds the 
farmer while he is extracting from the soil food to insure the 
next campaign of human advancement. Capital supports 
every other wrestler with nature for new supplies of raw ma- 
terial for the myriad uses of mankind. Capital is the patient 
beast of burden, bearing nature's treasures to and fro, first 
to the points where other capital carries on human industry, 
in its labor of transformation, and then to other points where 
human needs are eager to satisfy themselves by consuming 
these products. Capital builds houses and cities, and subdues 
wildernesses, and explores the remote regions of the earth. 
Capital sends the messengers of commerce that unite widely 
separated peoples in the mutually beneficial bonds of trade. 
Capital girdles the earth with means of communication, and 
makes the sea and sky a continuous sounding board, to serve 
for instant exchange of news between the remotest men. Cap- 
ital organizes our systems of maintaining order, of preserving 
peace, of guaranteeing individual rights. Capital is the con- 
servator of the arts, the promoter of science, the sustainer of 
religion. Capital provides means for the ordinary man to 
earn his livelihood, and opens avenues for the careers of 
genius. Yes, I am compelled to say, capital is so unstinted 
in her benefactions that she even endows the contemptible 
ingrates who convert her bounty into a corruption fund, to 
mislead and betray their fellow-men ! 

"It will doubtless always be necessary for us to maintain 
hospitals, to alleviate the ills to which flesh is heir. We may 

178 



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THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



never outgrow the necessity for asylums, for ministration to 
feeble minds. Among the burdens of the weak, which the 
strong may never escape the duty of helping to bear, we may 
cheerfully assume the obligation of patience and kindly tol- 
eration toward unavoidable ignorance. But, in the name of 
all the gods at once, it is our duty to unmask the treachery 
and the ignominy of those blind leaders of the blind who are 
the pampered agents of society to conduct gymnasiums for 
mental strength, and to guard the search lights of human 
understanding, but who prostitute their office and their op- 
portunity, who spread the contagion of depravity and law- 
lessness, who deny the truths and defy the obligations of 
civilized society ! Free thought is one thing. Cultivated im- 
becility is quite another thing. This incident ought to con- 
vince us that we have reached the boundary line where pa- 
tience ceases to be a virtue. There is no inheriting the earth 
for the sort of meekness that sits dumb, while flaunting false- 
hood triumphs over us. The men who are the main leverage 
of civilization must lift their voices loud and long enough to 
silence the betrayers of society I" 

Dexter sat down to the accompaniment of a silence still 
more void than the perfunctory punctuation of Edgerly's 
number in the program. Although Dexter had in a way voiced 
the opinions of the Patriarchs, he had not represented them, 
and the situation was much less satisfactory than if no reply 
had been made. The President was in more desperate straits 
than before, but he hailed it as a sign of hope when Joseph 
Morrison addressed the chair. 

In nine out of ten lists of the half-dozen leading merchants 
of the city, Mr. Morrison's name would be included. His ap- 
pearance would mark him as a scholar rather than a man of 
affairs. He seldom volunteered many words, either in public 
or in private, and this gave importance to the present excep- 
tion. He was much in demand for addresses on occasions 
that invited the utterance of ripe and successful experience. 
Although he protested that he had no qualifications for such 
duties, and although there was hesitation and almost diffi- 
dence in his manner whenever he undertook them, he never 
failed to impress his hearers as having spoken wisely and well. 
His own shyness, along with his reputation for unerring judg- 
ment in practical matters, was in effect a certificate of good 
faith. It appealed to the confidence of people who would have 

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THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



been repelled by a man who exposed his consciousness of 
power. When he spoke there was a contraction of the muscles 
of the lips, that might have been from mere embarrassment, 
but it seemed to be also a playful and kindly smile, which was 
a further commendation to his hearers. Even in this com- 
pany of his friends, none of whom would have been credited 
with more fitness to speak for all, he spoke as cautiously as 
though in doubt whether he were really entitled to the 
privilege. 

"I have nothing to add," he began, in a scarcely audible 
voice, "to either side of the argument. I simply thought it 
might help me to get my bearings, and perhaps incidentally 
afford space for all of us to take soundings or a solar observa- 
tion, as the case might be, if I occupied a few moments, with- 
out preventing the thoughts of the other gentlemen present 
from being better employed." 

The irenic effect of this quaint self-depreciation was visible 
at once. The dubious looks began to relax, and it was evident 
that there was a returning sense of security. 

With but slightly increased force in his voice, Mr. Morrison 
continued : — 

" While our friends have been speaking, my thoughts have 
turned to the feelings I have sometimes had in the theatre, as 
I watched a transformation scene. I have never been able to 
give myself up to the deception. Perhaps if I had begun to 
go to the theatre when my mind was more nimble, the case 
would have been different. Probably we do not get our 
money's worth unless we put our imaginations in the hands 
of the stage carpenters. It is the proper thing, I suppose, to 
accept fairyland for the time being, and to forget hard facts. 
I have never learned the knack of doing it. I always remem- 
ber that if I don't keep my coupon, I may be called upon to 
give up my seat. I never forget for a moment that I am sur- 
rounded by folks just like myself, and that the strange look 
of things hasn't made a particle of difference in the world 
where our lot is cast. 

"During the last few minutes especially, I had begun to 
wonder whether I hadn't at last been caught by a stage car- 
penter's trick. Before the talking began, I had a comfortable 
feeling that the people present, even those at the speakers' 
table, were all fairly good fellows. We had every appear- 
ance of being well disposed toward one another and the rest 

180 



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THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



of the world. Then came this play of words. It threw such 
a mist over us all that no one seemed to keep his everyday 
shape. To tell the truth, I had to grip my chair, and the edge 
of the table, and then I pinched myself to make sure that my 
senses were in working order. Now that you are taking on 
your natural looks again, and nobody seems quite so bad nor 
quite so good as we were pictured, the net result of the argu- 
ment foots up in my mind about like this. So far as I can 
take account of stock, we have on hand a working exhibit of 
the kind of rumpus that may be kicked up by a couple of 
highpower word-machines if they get beyond control. 

"The discussion has reminded me of a dream which I had 
several times when I was a boy. It probably started with a 
last look at the bed-post. In my dream I was looking at that 
bed-post. But it didn't stay a bed-post. Something was the 
matter with it. First it grew to the size of a tree. Then it 
was a steeple. Then it filled the whole sky. At last it sucked 
up everything in sight, and burst with a terrific crash. When 
things got to that pass I woke up, and found myself sitting 
bolt upright, staring at the same bed-post. 

"I wonder if that dream wasn't something like what hap- 
pens when we turn words loose. Our differences of opinion 
are bad enough, but the men who hold the opposite views 
would be much less likely to take on the appearance of bogies, 
if they could be satisfied to refer to each other in unfertilized 
language." 

Hosts and guests together forgot their dignity, and took 
the opportunity for a good rest in boisterous enjoyment of the 
gentle caricature. When quiet was restored, Mr. Morrison 
began once more in his most cautious manner. 

"This was all I had intended to say ; but while I am on my 
feet it may not be out of place to add a single remark. 

"The more I think of how many different kinds of people 
it takes to make a world, the more I am inclined to com- 
pare the condition of each one of us with that of the practical 
astronomer. He has the use of a very expensive plant. The 
instrument may be the most powerful in the world ; but after 
all it is pointed out through a narrow slit in the dome, and 
the observer may spend night after night, and at last his 
whole working life, in studying a patch of sky too small even 
to attract the passing notice of the average unscientific man. I 
can very well understand that such an observer might get so 

181 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



absorbed in his special interest that he would be intolerant 
toward other scientists who were observing other parts of the 
heavens, and especially toward investigators of other facts 
of nature, which tended to weaken the theories he had formed 
from his particular point of view. 

"Now, while I am unable to see that there is any such case 
against capitalists as has been intimated this evening, I can 
easily imagine that, if our telescope were pointed through 
the opposite side of the dome, we might discover facts which 
would modify our present calculations. 

"Probably none of us have a right to assume that our out- 
look settles the truth for the universe. In my judgment we 
all ought to be willing, and I believe the great majority are 
willing, to take account of all the facts from every quarter, 
whenever they are properly presented. More than that, if 
we can be sure that we are in the way to correct hasty con- 
clusions, and reach fuller information, and arrive at juster 
theory and practice — if we can be reasonably sure that we 
are doing this, and not merely making a magic lantern of 
our telescope, and pulling the observatory down over our 
heads in our excitement, I believe there would be an over- 
whelming vote of business men in favor of encouraging every 
sort of investigation." 

This was the first good opportunity for the Patriarchs to 
express themselves without restraint, as to the real situation. 
Their endorsement of Mr. Morrison's remarks was unmis- 
takable. There was a general feeling that peace had been 
restored. In the changed humor several of the members were 
mischievous enough to call for Mr. Lyon. The suggestion 
caught the fancy of the whole company, and the call became 
so insistent that he was obliged to make a show of response. 
He was glad the test had not come immediately after Edgerly 
had spoken, for he would have had no escape from the quan- 
dary. He was now all smiles, and entirely self-possessed. 

The assembly worked off more of its pent-up feelings by 
vigorous applause after he had risen. His reply was con- 
tained more in his beaming countenance than in his words. 

"I duly appreciate this delicate attention, gentlemen, " he 
began, in his most courtly manner, "and I need not assure 
you that the occasion has been one of deep interest to me. 
The only contribution which I feel moved to make to the dis- 
cussion, however, is the safe remark that, for me at least, 

182 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



silence is golden. It has been one of the rules of my life to 
exclude business discussions from my family circle. The 
working of the rule the other way forbids me to recognize 
any of my family skeletons in public. They will have to be 
dealt with in their proper place. At present I am glad to 
subscribe to the remarks of my friend who has just taken his 
seat. I do not know how we could better express our attitude 
toward so-called social problems." 

The President felt that the psychological moment had ar- 
rived for giving the leading speaker the usual opportunity to 
close the discussion. 

Edgerly had by this time lost all feeling of embarrassment, 
and he spoke as freely as he would in a faculty meeting. 

"I realize," he said, "that it is presuming upon your pa- 
tience to reopen the subject, after the admirable statement of 
our friend who has given us such an effective object lesson 
in the use and abuse of figurative language. At the risk of 
boring you, however, I venture to sum up my case as directly 
as possible. It would be a misfortune if this occasion should 
pass without a better understanding of different views of 
social conditions which we all in a certain way find puzzling. 
On the other hand, I should feel that I had not lived in vain 
if I could be sure that I had got before this company a dis- 
tinct view of the point which the gentleman who followed me 
utterly misapprehends. 

"E very thing that the gentleman said about capital would 
have been equally true in itself, and equally irrelevant to the 
question at issue, if it had been alleged of the atmosphere and 
the sunlight, instead of capital. They too are 'the beneficent 
foster mother of all desirable human effort.' They support 
the farmer and the artisan and the transporter, and the mag- 
istrate. They conserve every thing useful to the human race. 
I have no more question about these facts in the case of capi- 
tal than I have in the case of air and sunshine. But they 
do not come within striking distance of the point. 

"In order to approach the real issue we must suppose that 
someone has invented machines which can collect all the air 
and the sunlight of a city or a county, and store it in tanks. 
We must suppose too that patents have been granted upon 
the machines ; that the laws protect the owners in using them ; 
and that they propose hereafter to deprive their fellow citi- 
zens of the use of atmosphere and sunlight not drawn from 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



their tanks and paid for according to their own tariff. We 
must suppose further that this monopoly of the air and sun- 
light franchise is handed down to their children and chil- 
dren's children. How many generations do you suppose it 
would be before the heirs of that monopoly would be heard 
eulogizing themselves for conferring upon their fellow men 
the inestimable benefits of air and sunshine? 

"Now, gentlemen, I am not taking liberties with the argu- 
ment that has been submitted in reply to mine this evening. 
I am not putting any farcical element into it. I am pointing 
out the literal absurdity that constitutes the whole problem. 

"The only difference between the case of capital and the 
one I have supposed is that while we cannot possibly appro- 
priate any credit at all to ourselves for the atmosphere and 
the sunshine, each of us may, by due exertion, have a share 
in the creation of capital. But the share that the ablest of 
us may contribute to capital is but a minute fraction of all 
the work of other men that goes to make up that same capital. 

"The panegyric of capital to which we have listened de- 
serves to become a classic in the history of human error. I 
doubt if any man has ever gone on record with a more spec- 
tacular begging of the whole question. The argument confi- 
dently assumes that the men who now, under the laws of 
society, control capital, have themselves, and themselves 
alone, created the capital, and endowed it with its beneficent 
qualities, and that the heirs of these men will have an incon- 
testable right, to the end of time, to draw revenues from the 
same capital. There has been no more arrogant blunder 
since King Canute imagined that the royal prerogative in- 
cluded the tides of the ocean. 

"I am ready to grant for the sake of argument if you 
please, that every man in any way connected with property 
deserves some credit for the benefits that inhere in capital. 
If you demand it, I will concede that the man whose business 
activity consists in watching a ticker and wiring his broker 
to skim off a margin when prices go his way, is entitled to a 
microscopic tablet in an obscure corner of the Westminster 
Abbey of capitalism. I say I will concede it for public con- 
sumption, whatever my private opinion may be about his 
proper place in the Potter's Field of pauperism. I will agree 
with you, without any mental reservation whatever, that 
there are capitalists whose organizing and constructive origi- 

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BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



nality entitle them to all the rewards of merit that are due 
to the world's great inventors and discoverers. Between these 
extremes there are capitalists who have done everything that 
is in the power of one man toward producing the larger or 
smaller capital they control, while there are others who are 
the legal owners of capital, who have rather less claim to 
credit for the existence of capital, or for the benefits it confers, 
than the man who washes the bank windows has for the 
sunrise. 

"Still further, the most meritorious service that is ever 
performed by the ablest man, in producing or employing 
capital, starts with the endowment left by all the previous 
generations, and yet he would amount to nothing if he did 
not work in harness with hundreds or thousands or millions 
of fellow laborers. Whether it is the head of the house of 
Rothschild, or Number 999 in the shovel gang, he enters a 
world already fitted out with the arts, and sciences, and laws 
and technologies, and stock and good will that the cooperative 
work of the ages has accumulated. 

"If the best of us were left strictly to ourselves, without the 
use of the accumulations and support of other men, we should 
never be heard from, any more than if we were infants 
abandoned in our cradles. 

"All this gives edge to the distinction that the fact of cap- 
ital and its benefits is something as different from the system 
of human contrivances for handling capital as the existence 
of air and sunlight is from a concession of a right to tax peo- 
ple for the use of these natural agents. Some men actually do 
work without which capital would not be produced, or if pro- 
duced would not be useful, and yet they have no legal claim 
to a dividend from capital. Other men enjoy the honors and 
emoluments of capital who no more deserve them, than credit 
for the gifts of nature belongs to the men who make them- 
selves rich by befouling and beclouding the air and sunlight 
that belong to their neighbors. 

"There is no question at issue then about the benefits of 
capital. The whole social problem turns on differences of 
opinion about the fairness of the artificial code which we have 
devised to guard property rights in capital. 

"In a word, the point is this: — It is not a matter of abridg- 
ing anybody's rights, but of verifying titles to rights. Our 
institutions have grown up in such a haphazard way that the 

185 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



adjustment of rewards and merits which they secure is irreg- 
ular, inconstant, and inconsistent. This leaves an open prob- 
lem of improving our system in the direction of reducing these 
anomalies to a minimum. 

"Instead of committing an assault on the structural princi- 
ples of society, therefore, I have simply taken this occasion to 
state facts which are just as real as those reported by the 
weather bureau. You, of all men, should have a clear view of 
these facts. If you will, you may do more than any other 
class of men to insure wise action in view of the facts. I be- 
lieve that your class is to develop the leaders of the future, 
who will find their chief occupation in solving the problems 
which the facts involve. In the whole range of practical 
business there is nothing more certain than that w y e are face 
to face with open questions at once of practical adjustment 
and of pure morals, touching the principles of distributing 
control of economic force. We cannot dodge these questions. 
They will open wider and wider, and will never be closed until 
the terms of settlement command the assent of the sense of 
justice alike of the man without a dollar and the man with his 
millions. " 

After the meeting was declared adjourned a dozen mem- 
bers of the Club came to Edgerly to say that they were glad 
he had spoken his mind. Each was careful to say either that 
he did not agree with him, or that he was not sure whether 
he agreed or not ; but they said it was a good thing to have his 
side of the case presented. 

Halleck was among the guests. On the way to the coat 
room he caught Edgerly's arm and hastily half-whispered, 
"You never did a better day's work in your life, old chap! 
There'll be nothing to show for it, of course, but it's all to the 
good. You deserve a pension for your fight tonight as much 
as any veteran that fought for the Union !" 

Logan Lyon was present on his father's invitation, and his 
auto was at the door. It was but a few minutes' run to Mr. 
Lyon's house, and on the way no reference was made to the 
discussion. As the car stopped to leave the older man, he re- 
mained sitting a moment, as though there was something on 
his mind of which he wanted to speak. Apparently he dis- 
missed the idea, however, for his manner as he changed his 
position seemed to say, "But we will let that pass." His only 

186 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY 



words were, as he laid his hand on Edgerly's shoulder, while 
one foot rested on the step, "Good night, boys. It was an ex- 
tenuating circumstance, at any rate, Ernest, that you had 
something to do with keeping the reporters out." 

The two younger men rode in silence several blocks, until 
Lyon, reaching for the lamp over his head, and turning the 
button, peered into Edgerly's face, as he quoted : — " 'I never 
get over my wonder at the homeopathic quantity of thought 
that can be made to go with a crowd.' " 

Edgerly did not at once make connections, but felt around 
a few seconds, till he picked up the clue, and answered out of 
a rather sour smile, "You mean can not be made to go with 
some crowds!" 

Lyon gave full vent to his yodle. He felt like a boy that 
had been obliged to keep still in church, getting all the noise 
he could out of his freedom. " 'Twas as improper as a mon- 
key and hand-organ in the Supreme Court! You couldn't 
have shocked those fellows more if you had told them it was 
their duty to take turns playing the clown in the circus ! It'll 
take most of them the rest of the year to find out whether 
their champagne was doped, or it all happened! 

"Seriously though," he continued, after the spasm had 
passed, "some time or other that sort of thing has got to come, 
as sure as the old earth keeps on turning." 

Then, as they stopped in front of Edgerly's house, Lyon 
added : — "But you don't get ahead arguing with an iceberg. 
It's only a question of how long it will take it to melt." 



187 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



XII 
THE DOOR OF HOPE 

"Whether the world is getting closer together or pulling 
wider apart, depends upon the number of us that shake 
ourselves free from handicaps, so that we can count for 
all we are worth in the common interest." 



FOR the first three days following the Armory meeting 
Kissinger was in the state of mind of a life-long pros- 
pector who had at last struck pay dirt. The future was in 
his hands. It was simply a matter of detail. 

A German restaurant not far from the Avery building was 
a rendezvous for men after Kissinger's own heart, and he 
usually dropped in on his way home from the office for a 
stein of Bairisches, with an incidental flyer in philosophy. 
He burst upon the group Monday evening, with such a con- 
fident program of practical politics, in place of the usual 
transcendental poetry, that his change of base had some of 
the same effect on them which Graham had exerted upon 
him. Instead of talking abstract theory, he gave them a 
prophetic description of the necessary workings of Graham's 
plan. He had its application figured out as a sure geometrical 
progression, both in time and space. 

Kissinger did not usually set the pace in these cross-plane- 
tary runs. He was rather more used to the position of time- 
keeper or referee. The surprise was not chiefly, however, in 
his taking the lead, nor in his sanguine tone. The indicative, 
or the imperative, never the subjunctive, was parliamentary 
in these symposiums, and the unwritten law contained an- 
other clause, seldom honored in the breach ; namely, the less 
demonstrable the proposition the more dogmatic the asser- 
tion. 

But accustomed as they were to course at will over every 
field of human speculation, these enthusiasts were not pre- 
pared to hear Kissinger read the specific doom of his own 
company. There had always been a sort of tacit understand- 
ing that if particulars had to be used as terms of the argu- 
ments, they were merely algebraic signs, and did not mean 
that anything invidious was to be alleged of an individual 

191 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



x or y; nor that, if there had been, any intermeddling with 
other people's private affairs was contemplated. 

Obernitz, a reporter on the Volksblatt, was the first to draw 
the practical moral, and to throw it back upon Kissinger as 
a personal problem. "That sounds all very well. It's the way 
we long have sought, so far as words go. But if you believe 
it, Kissinger, what business have you any longer with the 
Avery Company? You are Adjutant of the regiment that is 
holding the first line of defense. You put in your whole fight- 
ing time and strength defeating your own wishes and princi- 
ples and predictions. If you mean what you have been say- 
ing, you're an infidel till you act accordingly. It's up to you 
to quit this treason to your own cause, and get out and hustle 
the rest of your life with Graham." 

Happily for Kissinger the sparring was lively, and two or 
three of the group at once countered on Obernitz with the 
same argumentum ad hominem. The Volksblatt had a large 
circulation among working people, but it was never known 
to support a proposition which employers in general opposed. 
It was doing its best to discredit the Graham movement. 
That very morning it had run an editorial which the debaters 
denounced as final proof that it was an enemy of democracy. 
It was betraying the people's cause to work for such a paper. 

Along this line Obernitz was pushed so hard that Kissin- 
ger was forgotten, and unobserved he presently went his 
way. 

At the same time, this rude awakening marked a longer 
step toward self-discovery than the exhilaration which the 
Armory meeting had stimulated. As he boarded his train 
Kissinger was saying to himself: "I have only been in a 
parachute after all, dangling a little lower in the clouds than 
I was before. It isn't terra firma till it will bear one's 
weight." 

The reaction did not carry him quite back to his former 
fatalistic position. He had got beyond acquiescence that 
nothing can be done. Though the element of resolution was 
entirely lacking in his new ideas, though they did not con- 
verge upon a change of his own actions, they brought into 
focus a picture of feasible general action, in which, however, 
he could not yet find a place for himself. 

Unsupported by a stronger will, Kissinger was hesitant and 
helpless. He could execute another's plan. He could pro- 

192 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



pose one for another to adopt. Every detail would be prompt 
and clear. He often submitted to Mr. Lyon alternative 
schemes, each carried out with such minuteness that his chief 
would choose between them instantly, and would have little 
occasion to modify the specifications. To assume the respon- 
sibility of decision, however, was another matter. 

Kissinger had so long acted only upon orders, that he dared 
not trust his own judgment until it had been endorsed by a 
higher authority. He had gone so far as to profess his faith 
in a policy and a program. He accepted it as concrete truth, 
not merely as abstract principle. He even welcomed the half- 
clarified perception that it was no truth for himself until he 
could do some of it ; but here the light failed. 

Kissinger did not admit that he had argued himself to a 
standstill. He would have been more at odds with the world 
than ever if he had recognized a deadlock. Although the new 
insight made an end of ignoring the collision between his 
occupation and his ideals, and although nothing was visible 
that promised a change in his position, yet he somehow felt 
that he was making progress. He thought of Bunyan's hero, 
after he had seen the w T ay but had not resolved to start. He 
thought of the rich young man who was directed to find eter- 
nal life by giving all he had to charity, and casting his lot 
with the wandering teacher. He thought, with suddenly in- 
spired worldly-wise shrugs and sneers, of the smug doctrine of 
the mobility of labor ; but on the whole he reassured himself 
that he would move, and was moving, and that his rate of 
movement was rather commendable, or at all events that his 
detection of the traditional under-estimate of the difficulty of 
moving entitled him to credit for the equivalent of moving. 

On the other hand there was no escape from two facts: — 
the Avery Company represented everything that the new 
democracy opposed, and he was the Company's servant. Yet 
he was less baffled by the problem of finding a position not 
open to the same objection, than by the difficulty of recon- 
ciling himself to separation from the Company. His case 
against it was thoroughly impersonal. Kissinger admitted to 
himself that if Graham's ideals could be realized tomorrow 
he would ask from the Company nothing better for himself 
than he had enjoyed from the beginning. He was interested 
in improving his own condition only in the sense that, as he 
saw it, the prime minister of a king was inferior, other things 

193 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



being equal, to the prime minister of a tribune of the people. 
He frankly confessed to himself that it would be not only 
out-of-date bombast, but out-of-character pretense, if he should 
affect toward his old employers any of the fabulous Roman 
sentiment, " What's banished, but set free from daily contact 
with the things I loathe!" 

Whatever might have been the chances that Kissinger would 
resolve the situation alone, he was not left to the experiment. 
For the twentieth time Obernitz went to Graham next morn- 
ing in search of a "story," and in the course of the interview 
Graham's allusion to his need of helpers led up to the mention 
of Kissinger. There might be nothing in it, but they agreed 
that no harmi could be done by a talk with him. When the 
suggestion was first brought to Kissinger, however, his obli- 
gations to the Company seemed to veto his personal inclina- 
tions. He said that such a meeting was impossible unless he 
first resigned his position. He could hardly enter and leave 
the strike headquarters without being recognized, and there 
was little probability that in the present state of public sen- 
timent the incident could be kept from the newspapers. 
Whether he was supposed to be a spy, or an informer, or the 
bearer of a feeler from the Company, the complications would 
be too serious to be risked. 

Graham had not intended to be understood as proposing a 
meeting at his office, but on some neutral ground, and under 
circumstances that would seem accidental. Through further 
mediation of the reporter, whom both knew to be reliable, 
they agreed later in the season to be on the path bordering 
the lagoon inlet south of the German building in Jackson 
Park, at two o'clock of a Saturday afternoon. There was 
safety in such publicity, as there' was only the remotest chance 
that either would be recognized, and none whatever that both 
would be known by the same people. Besides, a few min- 
utes' casual conversation in such a place, even if it were ob- 
served, would have no significance. 

Graham not only remembered Kissinger, from chance en- 
counters in groups of labor leaders before the strike, but in 
advance of Obernitz' latest reports he had been sufficiently 
informed to schedule the Avery executive as border territory. 
Graham divided the business population into three groups; 
first, those who do no thinking outside the routine of their 

194 



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THE DOOR OF HOPE 



occupations ; second, those who rate business as grab, and take 
the game as it is, on the chance of sometime being among the 
lucky ones to get the rich pickings ; third, those who are on 
principle disgusted with the system, and would quit it or re- 
form it if they could. He had no doubt that Kissinger was 
in the third class, but he realized that it would be a much 
harder problem to get effective action out of this last class 
than to make theoretical converts from the first to the third. 

Kissinger was so wedded to habit, and so loyally conscien- 
tious, that after they had stopped in a secluded spot on the 
sunny slope of the terrace, and had stretched out on the turf, 
he made the first approaches to the vital question. He began 
by protesting that it must be considered a purely personal in- 
terview, with no bearing whatever on the campaign between 
the strikers and the company. 

Graham met him quickly with the response, "We won't 
misunderstand each other, Mr. Kissinger. I take it to mean 
simply that if we were astral bodies we should hover in the 
same plane?" 

This way of putting it was neither quite direct enough, nor 
in a figure sufficiently familiar, to suggest a proper reply. 
Graham was one of the men, however, who accelerate other 
people's mental action, and make them surprise themselves 
with unexpected conclusions. Seeming to take agreement for 
granted, he assumed the initiative without waiting for an 
answer. "In other words, you must remember, Mr. Kissin- 
ger, that I could no more afford to have our talk misinter- 
preted than you could. If it should be known that we had 
approached each other, it might easily be said that I was 
weakening, and trying to find a way to hedge. I need pro- 
tection against that thought in your mind too, as much as 
you do against the possibility that I may suspect you of will- 
ingness to give the Company away. Now let us put both 
these ideas aside. Let us say nothing about the strike at all. 
If I believed you were the kind of man who would betray 
your employers, I should have no use for you ; and if I were 
looking no further than the mere issue with your Company 
it wouldn't be worth my while to talk about any goods that 
you have a right to deliver. I am after something much more 
important than that, and I will come to it in a minute." 

The man's genuineness was even more transparent in such 
a face-to-face talk than when he addressed an audience. Kis- 



195 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



singer did not need to be disarmed, but he was immediately 
reassured, and had no more compunctions about waiting for 
developments. 

"It would be mere guesswork to talk about numbers," con- 
tinued Graham, "until we have some way to make an actual 
count ; but every body who has taken the trouble to keep his 
eyes and ears open knows that discontent with our economic 
system is not confined to wage-earners. There isn't a rank in 
the business or political scale, from bank messenger to Chief 
Magistrate, which hasn't its quota of representatives who 
might be loosely termed socialists. That is, they knuckle to 
the present order of things because they can't help it. They 
have all sorts of grievances against it, from superficial to 
radical ; but a lot of them believe it is a pretty virulent case 
of blood poisoning. Some of them have no theory of a way 
to better things, beyond demanding the general rule of the 
square deal. Others see that new principles have got to be 
injected into the system before it will be very much im- 
proved. But with all these men, except one in a thousand 
perhaps, bread and butter have the last word. If these people 
could follow their own instincts they wouldn't let things alone 
another minute. They would ask no better occupation than 
social surgery. But they have got to live, and that's the end 
of it. I figure that there are thousands of first-rate men who 
are reformers at heart, but they can see no way to finance their 
affiliations. If the dollar question could be disposed of, it 
wouldn't take them very long to make the proverb read, 
'Where there's a way there's a will.' I count you in that class, 
Mr. Kissinger." 

With more ring in his voice than usual, Kissinger answered 
promptly, "If you had asked me that question within forty- 
eight hours after the Armory meeting, I should have said 
yes, without turning a hair; but now I am not so sure of 
myself. It would cost me a good many different kinds of 
wrench to break away from the connections I have made in 
more than twenty years. I know just what to expect where 
I am. I fit there. Perhaps I can make as much impression 
after all in the line of my social theories in my old place as 
I could anywhere else. Perhaps it is impractical to count on 
reforming business in one man's lifetime, and after all I'm 
not sure that a man is best placed to help reform when he's 
on the outside. Suppose I could get into a business that was 

196 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



run according to my ideas. Wouldn't the same reasoning 
that pushed me into it drive me to look for further trouble 
bucking against the deeper evils of the world ? If we should 
get our economics on a moral basis, there would still be all the 
other pains, and sorrows, and accidents, and disappointments 
of life, that we can't touch. Wouldn't it be just as practical 
for me to retire to a desert, and flock all alone by myself, or 
commit suicide, because the world is a crazy affair anyhow 
and I can't help it, as it would be to throw up the work that 
I can do well and launch out on a doubtful experiment? Sup- 
pose I have another twenty years of work ; is the world likely 
to be any better, at the end of that time, for anything I can 
do in another place, than it would be if I kept on with the 
Company?" 

"That's easy," Graham answered, in his most energetic 
manner. "The world is always better off when one more man 
concludes peace with himself. No single one of us is going 
to star in the United States Census, whatever he does or leaves 
undone. He can make neither a mountain nor a cavern of 
himself. But the world is composed of these minute units 
after all, and whether the world is getting closer together or 
pulling wider apart depends on the number of us that shake 
ourselves free from handicaps, so that we can count for all 
we are worth in the common interest. From nine o'clock till 
four every day you do more to perpetuate the system of ex- 
ploitation than you can offset for democracy in the rest of 
your twenty-four hours. We don't ordinarily consider it 
much of a puzzle to fix the standing of a man when he is run- 
ning behind at that rate." 

Because Kissinger was convinced but not persuaded, he 
could find nothing more to say. Graham waited long enough 
to satisfy himself that it was not a case for argument, but for 
impulse, and then he rapidly sketched his plans for putting 
his democratic propaganda on a permanent basis. He de- 
scribed an educational undertaking that combined features of 
a press bureau, and university extension, and correspondence 
study for wage earners. He explained that he had intended to 
develop this work regardless of the results of the Avery strike, 
and to continue such strikes for their educational value, what- 
ever the economic outcome. He showed how the plan of in- 
structing working men was to be combined with systematic 
pressure upon employers, on the one hand, and upon the poli- 

197 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



ticians on the other, to make room for labor's share of repre- 
sentation both in business and in law-making. On its active 
side it was to be a clearing-house of labor interests. It would 
not set up a theory of social organization, beyond the funda- 
mental principle that wage-earners have interests which are 
not sufficiently protected at present, and that concerted action 
by wage earners is the only means of getting fair recognition 
for their share in the economic process. The bureau must 
have branches for half a dozen different nationalities which 
could be reached effectively only in their mother-tongue. The 
enterprise was not a mere temporary expedient, but was to be- 
come a fixture among our economic and political institutions. 

Then Graham stated briefly the financial standing of the 
project. He would himself guarantee the working capital, 
and expansion of the scope of the bureau would be provided 
for by holding and increasing the present membership. The 
small fees would secure the publications and pay the expenses 
of local organization. 

"Now, Mr. Kissinger," he concluded, "neither of us is in 
a position to commit himself absolutely on a matter of this 
importance. I simply want to put before you a tentative 
proposition. Entirely apart from this democratic crusade, I 
must have a permanent Chicago office for my western busi- 
ness. I see no reason, however, why the agent in charge of 
that office could not at the same time be the executive officer 
of this bureau. He could then have his share both in experi- 
menting practically with the principle of labor representation 
on the business side, and he could spread the theory in the 
educational campaign. He would not be responsible for the 
plans in either case, except as one among many ; but chiefly 
for carrying out policies which I should adopt with my di- 
rectors. In that respect it would be very much like your pres- 
ent position. Your experience with the Avery Company, and 
your direct touch with the Germans, are the two elements that 
would make you valuable on the basis of your fundamental 
social theories. I am starting east tonight for a few speeches 
in the Massachusetts campaign. I may be gone two weeks. 
I simply ask you to decide in that time whether you would 
consider a proposition to take one or both of these positions, 
provided I could satisfy you that you would lose nothing 
financially by leaving the Avery Company." 

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BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



Very little more was said on either side, and with the un- 
derstanding tha.t they would arrange through Obernitz for 
another meeting after his return, Graham hurried away 
through the amphitheatre toward the Sixty-first street station. 

Kissinger crossed the boulevard, and walked south along 
the lake front. He was not the first theorist whose fine-spun 
systems had buckled when tested by the weight of a trial. He 
believed still, but he was shaken in his assumption that his 
beliefs had the carrying power he had supposed. He began 
to compare himself with a man who had spent his life design- 
ing trusses to span a stream, but had paid no attention to the 
piers. The call to risk himself upon his own constructions 
forced attention to the subject of adequate supports. 

It was one of those plausible Spring days which would as- 
sure a stranger to the capricious climate that Summer had 
taken possession. Kissinger stopped on the bridge by the side 
of the Caravels, seating himself on the parapet and dallying 
with the query whether Columbus' adventure was really more 
precarious than Graham's proposal. Then he wandered 
shoreward along the boulevard to the extreme park limit. 
While hesitating whether to return by the same route, or to 
circle the lower end of the park, he stood inviting the gentle 
fanning of the breeze from the lake. He gradually reversed 
his position, till the broad stretches of awakening verdure 
made the half of the picture on his left, while the pall of 
smoke that filled the upper quarter on the right took from im- 
agination all excuse for effort in construing the harbor en- 
trance as the jaws of the pit. 

A few days earlier Kissinger would have felt that he was 
doing a man's part if he had poetized the contrast into a sym- 
bolic expression of the difference between life as it should be 
and as it is. With Graham's realness still clutching him, he 
hadn't the face so to dignify child's play, and his more virile 
thought kept breaking into his passive contemplation with 
the impish question, "Yes, but what does it mean for me?" 

It was not true that Kissinger was hiding behind his wife. 
He was too much of a man for that. He knew that if he 
could manage himself, he could easily take care of the other 
obstacles. Still he frankly dreaded the unavoidable family 
discussion, in case he should decide to take the plunge. He 
did wish that he could have his wife's help in settling his 
mind, but he had long ago given up that recourse. They 

199 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



could talk only about utterly indifferent or perfectly obvious 
subjects. 

Kissinger would have respected his wife's differences from 
him in opinion if he could have tolerated the grounds on 
which her opinions rested. The fact that nothing which he 
regarded as important had a similar rating in Mrs. Kissinger's 
mind, and that the things which seemed to her essential had 
for him simply the value of trifles, left as alternatives either 
constant friction or exchange merely of the most colorless 
and commonplace ideas. He always felt humiliated when- 
ever he and his wife disagreed, and even more so when he 
was obliged to insist upon his own view than when he yielded 
to hers. In neither case did the outcome represent arrival 
at a common judgment. It was a mere giving way by one 
to the other, for no reason that was regarded as sufficient by 
the acquiescing party. Kissinger was 1 too chivalrous to be 
comfortable in requiring concessions from his wife, and in 
their case, therefore, the law that without concessions there 
can be no partnership had resulted in reducing their married 
life to a drearily empty alliance. 

From babyhood Elsie had been their one effective bond of 
union. However their own interests were drawing them 
apart, their common devotion to the child had always been a 
stronger factor. Their views of life necessarily converged 
upon very different ideas about Elsie's interests, yet Kissinger 
had usually been able to convince himself that a mother's 
judgment about a daughter has the better claims, and he had 
seldom felt bound to go far in urging his dissenting opinions. 

Although Elsie had been absent for several weeks on an 
eastern visit with Hester Kinzie, she unconsciously helped her 
father to tide over a difficult evening. The incident of the 
afternoon embarrassed him as though he were harboring a 
guilty secret. Mrs. Kissinger was not at home when he re- 
turned, but she arrived just at the dinner hour, and her prat- 
tle about Elsie's visit, and the letter that had come from her 
after Mr. Kissinger had left home that morning, was a wel- 
come cue for dismissing less agreeable things and getting all 
the sunshine possible out of their one common interest. 

After dinner, instead of turning to the evening paper, Kis- 
singer insisted that his wife should read the letter aloud. She 
assented, on condition that he would hear it to the end with- 
out comment, and would discuss it as a whole afterwards. He 

200 



BETWEEN ERAS 



accepted the terms, and after he had lighted his cigar Mrs. 
Kissinger read with as much sympathy as though she had 
written the letter herself : — 
* ' My best beloved Ones : — 

" Hester says it's only the Boston altitude, and I would get used to it 
in time; but looking inward at any rate I'm growing wilder-eyed the 
longer it lasts. 

' ' We have scratched the surface, from the Cambridge elms to Plymouth 
Kock; and we have had some deeper glimpses too, for there is no doubt 
that the family altars of the Arlingtons and the Beacons, as well as the 
Hartleys, are safely within the Holy of Holies. 

"Of course the mysteries are not solemnized very elaborately between 
seasons, but that leaves the neophyte with a little self-assertion, instead of 
completely overawed, as would surely be the case under sudden introduc- 
tion to the full ritual. 

"We have been in the presence of all the extant antiquities and local 
peculiarities celebrated in song and story, from Old South Church to baked 
beans, and codfish, and clams in a dozen lightning change characters. The 
ruins are as authentic as restorations ever dare to be, but the menu is no 
longer much more to the manner born than a shopping procession in front 
of Marshall Field 's is made up of aborigines. So far as things go, half a 
dozen pairs of contrasts that I can think of between different parts of our 
piebald Chicago, are as extreme as any difference I have noticed between 
the two cities as a whole ; but it 's the people ! The hysterics of streets in 
the old part are really something to be grateful for. They afford me 
instant relief. They seem to be saying, in the only unstudied language one 
finds, that once upon a time the inhabitants did as they felt, and the 
thought that the same may happen again sometimes lasts nearly back to 
Commonwealth Avenue. 

' ' The folks keep up a mental action that would register large figures on 
the cyclometer, but it doesn't seem to be thinking. It is more like a 
machinery for automatic selection of predigested foods, and the tableware 
to match. I am sure the confirmation questions must start with the danger 
of falling into mortal sin by serving vegetables in the soup tureen, or 
drinking hock and claret from the same kind of glass. I infer, too, that 
when spiritual unction is nearly ready to descend, the moral chasm sepa- 
rating a Websterian from a Worcesterian pronunciation is opened up in 
its whole appalling breadth and depth; and at last, when the sensibilities 
are in their most plastic state, the veil is lifted and the novice is given a 
vision of the fall from grace that would be involved in an ungoverned 
exclamation of surprise, when a vaguely questioning contraction of the 
optic muscles would convey the precisely adequate degree of attention. 

"The day's program doesn't seem to leave any place for yourself. 
You are merely a celebrant reading the appropriate offices. It reminds me 
of the Delsarte system of expression. It is all right if your breeding has 
predisposed you to associate postures and sentiments in that way; but 
what if the Avaunt-and-quit-my-sight passages, for instance, suggest to 
you only a deaf and dumb lady who has washed her hands and doesn't 
find a towel? 

"Living on cold-storage emotions doesn't remind me of the upper 
ether, but of a diving bell and breathing through a tube. Hester and I 
have developed a set of private signals. When she slowly deflects her chin 

201 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



in my direction till a straight line to the tip of her nose would run at an 
angle of 25 degrees with her shoulders, and when in that attitude she fixes 
on me a heart-stirring look of mingled warning and appeal, which the spec- 
tators are too polite to notice, but which they take in all the same, as say- 
ing plainer than words, ' Child of wrath ! Let us beware lest we fail to be 
duly impressed by the profound import of all this propriety! ' — when she 
does all that, it means a wink. The rest of the code is equally elaborate. 

1 ' On the outside, Hester fits into the function as though she didn 't know 
any better, but I see now why she wanted me. When we can let each other 
know by wireless that we are throwing hand springs in spirit, we take 
courage from the recollection that we have lived through other similar 
days and that there will be respite presently in our kimonas. 

' ' We have seen fifty Boston girls that are the real article. I like them 
too, and shall take their part hereafter no matter what people say. They 
can't help it. They're genuine inside at the start. They have good blood 
and could be counted on to better the record of their ancestors if they had 
a chance, but it's the environment. They're perfectly healthy modern 
girls, and to cramp them into their deportment must hurt in the beginning 
as much as it does when they stuff their physical culture bodies into the 
fancy ball costumes of Louis-Quatorze beauties. By watching specimens 
at the different stages, from sixteen to forty-five, I have decided that the 
asbestos veneer spread on by their education is carnivorous. It eats its 
way in from the outside with greater or less rapidity according to circum- 
stances, till at last the arteries are encased in it, and it acts like the ice on 
the coil of tubes in the water-cooler. 

' ' There 's another side to that, too. Something that I haven 't stumbled 
on must upset that calculation when these girls marry, because they do 
make perfectly fine husbands out of the most depressing material. I have 
turned with fond recollection to our letter carrier and gas inspector as 
antidotes for these youths in their twenties. Some of them are said to 
have been the delegates to take their year's beating from Yale in various 
events, but they appear to be too far out of training now for anything 
more strenuous than selecting haberdashery. If they were as precocious 
as the stories say, perhaps nature evens up matters by exacting a lifeless 
decade or so before they recover their grip. At present they seem to have 
no surplus left over from the preoccupation of retouching their own men- 
tal photographs. 

"The Hartleys are dears. They show what all this was when it was in 
the making, when it came from the inside, when it didn't have to be put 
on like blinders on a thoroughbred. They are interested in everything, 
from Bible classes to prize fights, — at least I accidentally discovered that 
he goes that far in the way of keeping up his information, — but every 
thing about them seems to be in the only proper proportion to everything 
else. If they are serious, they are gay, and studious, and sportive, and 
sympathetic, and restful, and busy and affectionate enough to make each 
part of it seem just perfect. They never make me uncomfortable, yet 
whenever I am with them I have a feeling that it would be nice to repent 
of something, if I only knew what. They keep me thinking that perhaps 
people will all sometime learn to make life as beautiful as they do. 

"I don't know whether I understand at all what architecture means, 
but the other day as I was looking at the original drawings of Trinity, the 
idea came to me that, if it should ever be completed according to the 

202 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



design, it would be a true picture in stone of the Hartleys as I have seen 
them. 

' ' But we have only to make the short run to Channing 's in Brookline to 
see the father undone in the son. In looks he will be his father's double 
at the same age, but unless he mends his ways that will be the end of the 
resemblance. He might as well be a grub-staker burrowing for gold ; only 
in his case it 's politics. He says he is practicing law merely to keep him- 
self out of mischief when he can't be laying wires that will end in the 
Senate. I call him an instance of the reclaimed incorrigible, but his wife 
says he is no better than a Chicago man. 

1 ' Two or three letters ago I began to tell you about the other half, as 
we had seen it from the Settlement. We are not through, but it's a long 
story, and I don't believe you would care to have me put more of it on 
paper. 

"It is getting to be second nature with me to think, talk, dream and 
scribble philosophy — if that is what you will call this letter. I feel it 
coming stronger. I will let you off with this much now, but I have caught 
the infection, and just as likely as not it will become chronic. You must 
expect progressive worse. 

"With lots of kisses to my dear both ELSIE." 

Following the reading, for seconds that may have run into 
minutes, the father and mother merely met each other's si- 
lently inquisitive smiles. Mrs. Kissinger's patience first 
reaching its limits, she prompted her husband with the gentle 
spur, "Tell me what you think, Walther." 

"You know," he hesitated, "Boston means little to me but 
State Street. I wouldn't risk an opinion beyond that." 

"Yes," persisted Mrs. Kissinger, "but on general principles, 
does it sound as though the visit would be of any use?" 

"Why, she is evidently getting some new ideas," Kissinger 
reflected. "Whether she is right or not in her estimates, she 
has got her mind on discriminations that are worth making. 
I have no doubt it will help her look with sharper eyes on 
Chicago people." 

"But that wasn't what I meant exactly," returned his wife. 
"Will it help her socially? Will she be any more likely to 
take advantage of her chances? You know a girl can't afford 
to keep on too long regardless of her prospects. I had thought 
she might meet some one in Boston who would impress her 
more than any one seems to have here." 

Although Kissinger was not often humorously inclined, 
he could not refrain from recurring innocently to the very 
strong impression that Mr. and Mrs. Hartley had evidently 
made upon Elsie ! 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOOR OF HOPE 



"You are too exasperating, Walther," Mrs. Kissinger 
pouted. "You ought to realize that it makes no difference 
what Elsie thinks of the present generation of pilgrim grand- 
fathers. You are never willing to admit that we are taking 
our duties too lightly about getting her a husband." 

"My observation has been," Kissinger submitted, rather 
tangentially, "that in this country at any rate, the less the 
parents show their hand before they hear from the young 
people the safer they are from putting their foot in it." 

Kissinger was aware that this reflection would touch a ten- 
der spot, but he had not much hope that his wife would be 
decoyed from pursuit of its substance by the provocation it 
gave to her jealous zeal for form. He guessed that Mrs. Kis- 
singer was looking for an opening to introduce a conference 
about several men who were within the radius of her hopes or 
fears. He was not only in a partially contrite mood for the 
errant conduct of the afternoon, but he foresaw that he would 
not remain constant enough to block off further temptation. 
Acting as his own confessor, and assuming occasion for both 
absolution and indulgence, he resigned himself to the unwel- 
come discussion, as the most convenient form of penance. 



204 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE RENEGADE 



THE RENEGADE 



XIII 
THE RENEGADE 

"All the men whose brains are not thicker than their necks 
will come to it sooner or later. Some of them still get their 
fun going West to kill bear, but as a pure sporting propo- 
sition coming East to rescue the unconscious rich from 
themselves has a sure shade." 



AT first Hester Kinzie's interest in Elsie had been merely 
a renewal of obligation under a debt of gratitude in- 
curred in his early manhood by her father. When young 
Kinzie came a stranger to Chicago, Mrs. Kissinger's parents 
had been timely and effectual friends. Not only had they 
smoothed his way to social recourse from the dismal isolation, 
or more dreadful promiscuity, which would have been the 
alternatives in those earlier days, but the business connections 
which enabled Kinzie in a few brilliant years to take his place 
among the richest men of the town would hardly have been 
formed without the help of Mr. Wells. When the reverses 
came which hastened his benefactor's death, Mr. Kinzie was 
in Australia, and he knew nothing of the difficulties till it 
was too late to offer assistance. After his return he was able 
to be of more service than he permitted Mrs. Wells to know, 
in recovering something from the ruins of the property ; but 
his sense of obligation was quickened by the incident, and 
he later cultivated the sentiment also in his daughter. 

During their irregular visits to Chicago, in her childhood, 
Hester gravely took for granted a partnership with her father 
in a sort of formal protectorate over Elsie. The difference in 
their ages favored this juvenile affectation. Only within the 
last few years had the two girls begun to be drawn together by 
mutual attraction. Neither was fully aware that a change 
was going on, but in a short time the stilted acquaintance was 
merged into spontaneous affection. 

Superficially Elsie was the active, virile element in the 
friendship, and a compensation for Hester's negative gentle- 
ness. The precise contrary was the underlying truth. Elsie 
was buoyant, and vivacious and insatiably interested ; but in- 
stead of proving constancy of will and steadiness of purpose, 

2 09 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE RENEGADE 



her animation merely reflected her guileless vagrancy, and 
her tractability by any sort of alluring stimulus. 

Hester was externally placid. She had only rare moments 
of effervescence. This was not because she was dull or tired 
or cold. She had tested a range of reactions far beyond El- 
sie's experience, yet there was not a sated fiber in her body. 
For her own consciousness every nerve was an e string; but 
although a beginner she was too well trained to permit a note 
to be strident. From her outlook upon life not an Autumn 
tint was in sight. Even the storms were benisons. But some- 
where she had picked up the clue that life is a palimpsest, and 
that the surface readings are mere minor flourishes upon the 
deeper lines that all say "Problem!" and "Mystery!" She 
had found a life centre for herself in the implied challenge. 
She had no desire to be known as learned, and she did not 
care to delve very far into the lores that had made the reputa- 
tion of scholars, but she found her animus in the incessant 
provocation to pry beyond accepted versions into the re- 
moter meanings of familiar things. Her appetite for life was 
uncloyed simply because she was not dependent for variety 
upon a succession of new tastes. None of the old sensations 
had lost their zest. If she was not constantly detecting fresh 
flavors, she was sure they were playing hide and seek with 
her. Instead of finding the world in herself, she was trying 
to find herself in the world. Her manner of mildly amused 
serenity was not passiveness. It was merely a decorous, if 
withal a coquettish veil for vigilant scrutiny of life, and for 
the resolved unwomanliness of forging toward a fulcrum for 
moving life, instead of submitting without recourse to the 
decrees of tradition. 

Hester's mental attitude was not apparent, because its be- 
trayals were mostly inquisitive rather than assertive. If she 
ventured to express secessionist ideas, they were usually in 
the form of questions, or at most of playful satire. In Johna- 
than Edwards' time her skepticism would no doubt have been 
charged to belated childish forwardness. It was in reality 
one of the active phases of her maturing sense of responsi- 
bility. 

Without her knowledge or consent, Hester had been fore- 
doomed to the vocation of wealth. While her father had 
never caught other views of the social basis of morality than 
the detached rays which real life perforce refracts upon the 

210 



BETWEEN ERAS 






THE RENEGADE 



most opaque individualistic philosophy, he had done his best 
to teach his daughter all that he himself understood about 
the duties of wealth. As she was about to become her own 
agent in performing these duties, she found herself reopening 
the questions, What are they? and Why are they? 

Hester was so much a child of the present that, without 
recognizing many of the sources from which she drew the 
opinion, she had reasoned out for herself that "ought" is 
merely a guide-post to the directions in which our actions 
might do other people good, while "ought not" is a warning 
of directions in which our actions would do other people harm. 
When she had gone so far, it was a short step to the inference 
that the duties of wealth must be discovered by finding out 
just how different kinds of actions connected with wealth 
affect, well or ill, near or remote human beings. She was not 
aware that she had worked her way back close to the founda- 
tions of social philosophy. Not as a technical scientific pur- 
suit, however, nor as a mere intellectual fad, but as a conscien- 
tious preparation to act her part with the most good and 
least harm to others, she was quietly practicing the art of 
tracing cause and effect in all sorts of human actions. 

If this search was worth while for herself, Hester thought, 
why would it not be the proper initiation into life for every- 
body? She did not believe that people generally took very 
long views about the consequences of their acts, nor that they 
cared so very much about the consequences, except for them- 
selves. For this reason she was forewarned when she found 
in the legal, or moral, or social codes, or the economic systems, 
or the religious doctrines that people had built up, greater or 
lesser elements which provoked her active doubt. What else 
could be expected of the narrow and selfish people that we find 
ourselves to be? For the same reason, she reflected, the 
sophisticated attitude, both toward our own individual im- 
pulses and toward public institutions, is not standing in awe 
of them but in judgment over them. 

All this reasoning was a sort of by-conscious process in 
Hester's mind, and it rather stimulated than retarded her 
complaisant avidity of life. She divulged her speculations, 
even to Elsie, only in the concrete ; but two people cannot be 
constantly saying to each other, "This is better or worse, truer 
or falser than that," without gradually coming to an open 
agreement or disagreement about the implied standards of 

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FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE RENEGADE 



judgment. Since resigning her precocious protectorate over 
Elsie, Hester had neither in thought nor in act assumed the 
more priggish role of proselytizer ; yet the mentor and the 
guide were rather privileged than submerged in the friend. 
The two girls could not have selected each other if their kin- 
ship of spirit had not been on a high level. Hester did not 
try to persuade herself that no mission was concealed in her 
affection for Elsie. It was not a project of conversion, how- 
ever, but of rescue from perversion. Hester read Mrs. Kissin- 
ger like an open book, and was sure that Elsie's instincts 
were truer than her mother's turgid ambitions. She accord- 
ingly had never a compunction about plotting like a terrorist 
to secure for Elsie liberty to be herself. 

It was merely a consistent detail in this program for Hester 
to claim Elsie's company on her latest visit to her father's 
only sister. Between the houses of Hartley and Lyon there 
had long been amicable feud over Hester's first allegiance. 
She did not know in which family she felt the more at home, 
and she tried to divide her time so evenly between them that 
no preference would appear in the comparison. 

Channing Hartley advertised no altruistic motives for his 
share in politics. He neither coined pious phrases, nor pro- 
tested superior principles. He simply joined a new crowd 
that settled down to business with the blunt notification to all 
concerned, " We're in the field to stay until we down the fel- 
lows who have been 'it' so long they suppose they own Massa- 
chusetts for good and all." Any one who knew Hartley would 
be sure that in his own mind there were finer sentiments be- 
hind this coarse profession of policy ; but he accepted the fact 
that politics, to amount to anything, must be rough riding, 
not a Spring review ; and he thought it would be ample time 
to check up moral values after actual results were in evidence. 

Hartley was entering his auto Sunday evening, after a few 
moments at his father's, when he recalled something and re- 
turned to the house. Following their voices to the music 
room, where Hester and Elsie, in deference to the day, were 
attempting some passages from the Messiah, he interrupted : — 
"It just occurred to me, girls, that in the course of your re- 
searches into the impending poor and the impenitent rich you 
might care for a side look at politics. I am to preside at a big 
meeting in Mechanics' Hall Tuesday evening, and your Chi- 

212 



BETWEEN ERAS 



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cago trouble-maker, Graham, will be the chief speaker. If 
you are interested, Clara will add the matronly dignity, and 
I will provide seats and escorts." 

The suggestion was caught up so promptly that Hartley 
was further inspired, "If the species should turn out to be 
worth studying under the microscope, as well as through the 
opera glass, come to breakfast with us Wednesday morning. 
Graham will be there, and may be you will be able to persuade 
him to be good when he returns to the seat of war." 

"My impression is that he is not a native product," cor- 
rected Hester. "He is said to be an exotic of rare variety. It 
would be unwise to miss him though, don't you think, Elsie?" 

"Irrespective of the question whether there are imaginable 
contingencies in which a Chicago man of high or low degree 
could fail to afford temporary mitigation in Boston," rumi- 
nated Elsie aloud, "I should like to shake hands with a real 
anarchist. Unless his teeth and claws have been drawn, it 
will be too exciting for anything. Nothing could keep me 
away Mr. Hartley." 

The personal note was clearest to both girls until the chair- 
man had finished his opening address. The hall was simply 
one among many halls, and the audience merely a duplicate 
of other audiences. The particular issues of the campaign 
were rather indistinct to Hester and Elsie, but the chairman 
was a dashing speaker. He evidently knew how to reach his 
hearers, and if his special guests missed any of the fine shad- 
ing of his allusions, they more than made up for the failure 
by their zeal in applauding every winning of applause, and 
by their prompt signals of congratulation to Mrs. Hartley 
at each of these passages of her husband's success. 

There was no time to exchange interest for indifference be- 
fore Graham's personality began to make its own appeal. 
The vague expectations of a ruffian or a freak were forgotten 
until the talking-over after reaching home ; and the surprise 
of a presence so incongruous with reputation enforced atten- 
tion. 

The speech was in substance the same that Graham had 
delivered at the Armory meeting, with variations adapted to 
the local situation. Although the thought did not escape 
Elsie, it was again the personal that affected her chiefly. To 
her the speech was an exploit, and the speaker a champion. 

213 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE RENEGADE 



A mere exhibition of impulsive, dare-devil defiance of his 
class-traditions would have been amusing as a spectacle, but 
not convincing. Graham's apparent plane of action, however, 
threw the usual motives of men into such sordid shadow that 
the contrast in his favor was splendid. 

If this personal aspect did not make the chief impression 
upon Hester, it was not because she observed it less, but be- 
cause she attended to the wider meanings more. Not that she 
heard anything strictly new, but impersonated in Graham 
mere thoughts became vital and spiritual as conviction and 
effort. The world had predestined this man, like herself, to 
service in the livery of wealth. He was resisting subjection to 
the service and seizing its control. He was promoting the 
service from serfish to knightly. Was this merely a tempo- 
rary individual digression from the straight and narrow path 
of general necessity, or had he broken an arbitrary tether, 
and recovered a liberty that would help others to freedom? 
Was there anything in his solution that might fit as a key to 
her own problem ? The question came to her : — If the work- 
ing of the world's machinery frees some people, without ac- 
tion of their own, from all concern about the necessities of 
life, why isn't it the first duty of such people to invest their 
freedom in working on the problem of ways and means to 
endow everybody with the necessities of life? 

The breakfast table was under an awning near the west- 
ern veranda, and Mr. and Mrs. Hartley waited for their guests 
in a markee, flanked by silver birches, toward the foot of the 
lawn. Hester and Elsie arrived but a moment in advance 
of Graham, and after he had been presented Mrs. Hartley, 
leading the way with Graham toward the breakfast tent, be- 
gan to furnish conversational pointers by adding that their 
cousin was at home in Boston, but Miss Kissinger was from 
Chicago. 

Elsie was ready with the expected demurrer, and main- 
tained the claim of Chicago to Hester. After a skirmish that 
was rapid and general, Mrs. Hartley triumphantly appropri- 
ated the results of its inconclusiveness : — "So you see, Miss 
Kinzie is not only altogether a Bostonian, but Miss Kissinger 
herself is almost naturalized." 

"I must still beg your pardon, Mrs. Hartley," Elsie re- 
sisted loyally, "I am neither naturalized nor even domesti- 

214 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE RENEGADE 



cated. You have no idea of the main force it requires every 
minute to protect all these decencies of civilization from the 
scandal of my savage instincts. " 

"While we have our logic in working order/ ' interposed 
Hartley, "we might as well clean it all up in one job, and 
prove Mr. Graham a Bostonian." 

"If taking the precaution to be born in Ohio, then in a 
moment of over-confidence risking one's birthright by com- 
ing to Harvard, and in the nick of time getting back to 
reality via the crags and peaks of Idaho proves it, there is no 
need of a contest," was Graham's quick confession. 

"Then you surely know many Boston people?" encouraged 
the hostess. 

"Whole white-robed choirs of them, Mrs. Hartley," Gra- 
ham asseverated solemnly. "At least I did, but I fear their 
faculty of forgetfulness knows what is expected of it. I 
should probably run into a sharp fall of temperature if I 
ventured to presume on the past. It is a long way back to 
'95. Even two fairly serious years in Law would have quite 
a record to show in the way of effacing eligibility, but the 
dubious meanwhile leaves no margin for doubt. If anyone 
dared to admit by-gone acquaintance with such a renegade, 
the limit would not go beyond your husband's venture ; that 
is, recognition for politics' sake only." 

In the few hours the two men had been together, they had 
found a common footing which put them on easy terms. They 
had agreed on such fundamental matters that they had been 
able to chaff each other rather roughly over differences about 
somewhat important details. Even before his display of skill 
with an audience, Hartley had decided that Graham had in 
him the material for a national leader. Graham's independ- 
ence of thought, and courage in action/were no stronger con- 
firmations of that judgment than his modesty and his playful 
humor. Hartley said he always deducted a few cubits from 
his estimate of a man's stature if it turned out that he wasn't 
big enough to laugh at himself. Meeting Graham on his own 
ground, Hartley retorted : — 

"I don't really believe the story that you've taken the anti- 
dress coat vow, Graham." 

"Just as likely as not I may some time have some more 
evening clothes built," conceded Graham, "if they would save 
society extra expense for special police. I have no implacable 

215 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE RENEGADE 



quarrel with them. It's chiefly the terra-alba-frosting people 
you have to level down to when you wear them." 

The women had been biding their time for luring Graham 
into talk of his campaign. He avoided it in such company 
only to the extent of insisting that the advances must be made 
by others. Mrs. Hartley surmised as much, and threw the 
fly in the rather glaring hint ; "I though last evening that in 
time I might learn partially to approve of you in the abstract, 
Mr. Graham, if it were not for the danger of your convincing 
my husband." 

"It's the only first-rate substitute for out-door exercise, Mrs. 
Hartley," returned Graham gaily. "All the men whose 
brains are not thicker than their necks will come to it sooner 
or later. Some of them still get their fun going West to kill 
bear, but as a pure sporting proposition, coming East to res- 
cue the unconscious rich from themselves has a sure shade." 

"I'm afraid this mixture of idioms is a little beyond us all, 
Graham," laughed Hartley. "Break it gently, and in home- 
made terms." 

"If I should be more literal," Graham objected, "I should 
be talking shop in spite of myself." 

"So much the better," fugued Hartley and the three 
women, each in a different version. 

"With apologies barred then," consented Graham, "at your 
order I'll yard-stick and scissor a length of my dry goods. In 
the first place, I take it everybody with his red corpuscles all 
right gets more excitement out of a game that contains possi- 
ble new situations, than out of one in which all the variations 
are understood and plotted. The money game has been re- 
duced to a mechanically exact science. Not everybody is com- 
petent to play it, of course, any more than every one is fit to 
play chess. But if the people who have the talent for either 
game want to learn it, and can get a license, and will pay the 
price, they can make the one about as regular as the other." 

"Then you don't have a chapter of the Down-and-Out Fra- 
ternity in your part of the world?" punctuated Hartley. 

"Of course we have the scramble between individuals, to 
strip one another of the wealth that is produced, and this in- 
troduces uncertainty. On the whole, this confusion is better 
in the long run than the other extreme of dropping competi- 
tion, and settling down content to feed on our own fat; just 
as the blood vendetta is preferable, biologically, to the misery 

216 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE RENEGADE 



of mere incestuous breeding in and in. As a strictly social 
proposition, however, we have played the money game to a 
stalemate. — I'm mixing this chess figure a little, and it 
musn't be carried too far, but it helps some — The social game 
has never been played at all, beyond the bare rudiments. It 
all remains to be worked out, and this gives its superior sport- 
ing value. To turn back on myself a bit, the really gamy 
thing that is right ahead is to take hold of our economic in- 
terests and organize them into full harmony with all the other 
social interests somewhat as though we had now only check- 
ers, and were wrestling with the problem of variations that 
would finally turn out to be chess." 

Hester had thus far hardly joined in the conversation ex- 
cept with her eyes, or as an occasional monosyllabic echo of 
one and another. As Graham paused, and no one else vouch- 
safed a reply, she observed demurely, "It isn't possible, Mr. 
Graham, that you took down a roll of rather large figured 
wallpaper, instead of plain drilling?" 

Graham's laugh rippled with the others, but as he seemed 
to wait for further specifications, Hester added, "In other 
words, could it not be brought within the reach of a still 
feebler grade of intelligence?" 

"It's not easy to get one's breath after such a rebuke, Miss 
Kinzie," faltered Graham. "If I'm as muddy as that, I'm 
in a bad way, but I'll make one more try. In a word, civilized 
society has gradually taken on the character of a machine for 
the manufacture of capital. The machine is not run for the 
supreme purpose of promoting knowledge, virtue, art, relig- 
ion, or merely general human comfort. All these are merely 
incidental and secondary to the single purpose of the machine. 
Most of the men who engineer the machine don't know this. 
They think it is under their control, a docile domestic servant, 
trained to do the bidding of their higher impulses. They 
think it is malicious libel to lay bare the real situation. It 
doesn't make any difference how lofty minded men are. 
Capital either does or does not have the last word. If it does, 
whether they know it or not, they are committed to a program 
that consumes men for the sake of producing things. There 
is going to be a time when political parties will split on the 
straight issue, 'God or Mammon;' and when they have got 
that antithesis far enough into their heads to realize the 
actual role it plays in human affairs, very likely the pro- 

217 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE RENEGADE 



gressives will give themselves the grand air of having dis- 
covered a brand new principle of social cleavage." 

"Let me point you not to use that metaphor in the Massa- 
chusetts campaign/' Hartley interjected half -seriously. "The 
coroner's verdict might be, 'Didn't know it was loaded with 
Rum-Romanism-and-Rebellion !' " 

Graham facetiously crossed himself, but he was thinking 
less of the warning than of a more effective way of expressing 
his meaning. 

"If I seem to be talking poetry instead of literal every-day 
politics," he resumed, "let me recall a parallel case. I have a 
friend nearly twice my age whose father was a large slave 
owner in the South before the war. The son is now a farmer 
in his home state. The first time I visited him there he gave 
me his theory of the economic weakness of the slave system. 
He said it meant simply clearing more land, to feed more nig- 
gers, to clear more land, to feed more niggers, to clear 
more land, and so on in an endless, empty circle. Clear- 
ing land and feeding niggers was a process that tended 
to impoverish both, and to keep the people who imagined they 
were masters of the process from realizing that they too were 
its slaves. They were not able to get outside of it far enough 
to take their bearings, and lay their course toward a more 
profitable purpose. Now my Southern friend's historical an- 
alysis put me on the track of the radical vice in our business 
situation. The capitalistic system is simply a disguised repe- 
tition of the same stupidity. Stripped of all fine phrases, its 
program in brief is to employ more capital, to employ more 
labor, to employ more capital to employ more labor, to employ 
more capital, in an endless series. But the last thinkable 
term of the process always turns out to be capital, not people. 
The human beings concerned are not considered as persons, 
but as labor force, worth what they are worth as producers of 
capital. The magnificent fellows who are officers of this sys- 
tem are usually honest when they deny that they are heartless 
and heedless of their fellow men. There is genuine tragedy 
between their personal sentiments and the gravitation of the 
system in which they are satellites. The men who are sup- 
posed to be the realists par excellence of the modern world, 
the men who never lose their heads, the men who see things 
as they are, and act always and only upon evidence, and ac- 
cording to the evidence, — these men have brought into the 

218 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE RENEGADE 



world, and are frantically fighting to fasten upon the world, a 
system of control of which the essential principle is a direct 
inversion of real values. The highest and best that we know 
anything about, the last sane reason we can offer for the con- 
tinuance of the world at all, is the happiness, and prosperity 
and development of human beings. Everything which is 
tributary to that is good. Whatever tends to become a substi- 
tute for that is bad. Our capitalistic system in its present 
spirit reverses the destiny of humanity. It puts last first and 
first last. The big thing for men to undertake, therefore, is 
the subjugation of capital. We have got to redeem our ma- 
chinery, and run it for all it is worth in the interests of people, 
and for the production of more machinery only when the 
interests of people create the demand." 

The monologue passed into lively discussion, and the party 
had returned to the markee, where the women were resum- 
ing work on some banners to be included in the scheme of dec- 
oration for a garden party that was on the program. His wife 
was so absorbed in the argument that Hartley had been 
obliged to propose the move ; and after they were comfortably 
disposed in the new location he reopened the proceedings : — 
"We were just getting warmed up to the subject. Go ahead, 
Graham." 

"You have been explicit enough at last, Mr. Graham," Hes- 
ter deposed by way of supporting the motion, "to give me one 
or two gleams of comprehension. It is getting a little like 
calling the culprit by name, however. I feel like throwing 
myself on the clemency of the court by admitting that when 
anyone says 'capital' it may include me, though I'm by no 
means an officer." 

"I feared the worst, Miss Kinzie," returned Graham, with 
a rather well executed counterfeit of solicitude. "Capital, 
like other contagions, respects neither youth, beauty nor inno- 
cence. I had already discovered its marks upon your noble 
brow, but as you were evidently let late into the plot, it would 
be unjust to regard you as an original offender." 

Then, with the thought that this personal application 
barred further argument, Graham began to inspect some of 
the unfinished work, at the same time taking the most ob- 
vious line of retreat by moving to discontinue. "To tell the 
truth," he protested, "there is no stopping place when one 

219 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE RENEGADE 



starts on this subject; and I am much more interested in hear- 
ing your plans for the lawn fete than in listening any longer 
to my own voice." 

"But we can't let you off so easily, Mr. Graham/' urged 
Mrs. Hartley. "You had not come to the point at all. It was 
about the sporting proposition." 

"I don't just yes! I remember," stammered Graham. 

"It was about more fun in an improved game. That's easily 
cleared up, and then no more shop till tonight in Haverhill. 
To put it briefly, the capitalistic game reminds me of football 
in the days when mass plays were in their glory. The game 
was reduced to a dreary minimum of nothing but brute 
force advancing the ball. It was entirely negligible senti- 
mentalism to make mention of the life or limb of players, 
or the happiness of spectators. At last the rule-makers have 
apparently got a glimmering of the idea that the players are 
the main thing, not the ball. All the ball is good for is to fur- 
nish a use for the players' skill, and to mark their success in 
applying their abilities. With this idea in mind, the prob- 
lem is to make a game which the players can put themselves 
into at their best, and out of which they can get the maxi- 
mum enjoyment, without too much brutalizing of themselves 
and their friends. The players are to be no longer merely 
concentrated weight. They are to be men organized just 
enough to get the best use of their bodies, while keeping them- 
selves safely within the limits where mind turns the scale 
against matter. 

"The comparison won't bear too close examination," Gra- 
ham commented, "but in our financial game 'the interests of 
capital' take the place of advancing the ball. However hu- 
manitarian the sentiments of individual capitalists may be, 
capital as an impersonal interest sets the pace, not capitalists 
as persons in the full sense ; and they must reach its mark or 
drop out of the struggle. 

"The most energetic men in modern society have turned 
the game of life into the capitalistic game. It is something 
as though the game of baseball had gradually been perverted 
from its present character to a method of manufacturing balls 
and bats, and the change had gone so far that the mass of balls 
and bats in the world was steadily increasing, while freedom 
to use balls and bats was constantly becoming more re- 
stricted. 

220 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE RENEGADE 



"The last play that has been worked out in the capitalistic 
game is known as 'concentration/ It raises the force of cap- 
ital to its highest power, but at the same time it shows that 
unless the rules are changed the game will presently devour 
the players. Here is where the livelier sport comes in, Mrs. 
Hartley, and you are probably correct in your suspicion that 
your husband is the kind of man who is bound to get his 
share of it." 

The signs that his comparisons had not been wholly suc- 
cessful kept Graham at his task. 

"I doubt if it is possible to make such a fine distinction 
very clear in words, till it has dawned on us gradually, after 
we have formed the habit of occupying the spectators' seats, 
and looking down on life as disinterested witnesses of the 
show. The gist of it all, as I have said, is first that capital is 
merely accumulated material ; second, its proper function in 
the economy of life is simply and solely to serve as a means 
for promoting the physical and spiritual well-being of people ; 
third, by legal fictions that have turned men's heads, this 
physical stuff, along with privileges to corner more stuff, has 
been made into a superhuman personality; fourth, this arti- 
ficial person, capital, is converting the masses of men into 
drudges to drag its chariot, and the rest into more or less 
glittering followers celebrating its ghoulish triumph. 

Graham must have abstracted himself from his surround- 
ings for a moment, and have got into communication with a 
larger audience, for he seemed to be shaping a passage for a 
speech when he concluded : — 

"Modern life has been run off into a blind alley by this 
personification and Caesarization of capital. The next era 
of democracy has got to be filled up with the ascent of per- 
sonal interests to the dominant place, and the reduction of 
capital to its normal function as their tool. The present dem- 
ocratic problem is to change the working formula of life 
from 'The interests of capital require this and that of the 
people/ to 'The interests of people require this and that of 
capital.' The keenest wits in the world, scattered through all 
classes of society, have been making out the signs of the 
times in this same sense. The vast mass of human interests 
that have been crowded out of place by capitalistic interests, 
are feeling their way back toward combinations that will re- 
store the balance. The collision of principles is as sure as 

221 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE RENEGADE 



fate, and it forces upon modern people the most difficult 
strategic problems, on the highest level, that civilization has 
ever tackled. It will not be long before the finest minds in 
the world will be in full night of competition for the prizes 
of leadership in solving these problems. We are simply making 
a modest beginning in our campaign for 'the right of labor to 
a voice in the control of capital/ For a man who believes 
in his fellow men, there is more satisfaction in planning such 
a campaign than in managing the biggest financial syndicate 
on earth." 

"Then this is your version of socialism, Mr. Graham?" 
pursued Mrs. Hartley. 

Graham's effort to meet the question humorously stopped 
with a hesitating laugh, and he continued in the same literal 
tone : — 

"There is a good deal to be said for the socialists, Mrs. 
Hartley, but I am not one of them. They have queered the 
name by being so much more certain about the solution than 
about the problem to be solved. I am not a socialist, in the 
first place, because I am sure nobody can foresee how de- 
mocracy will adjust itself in its next form; and I am willing 
to let anybody dream about that who pleases. I go only so 
far as to say that there are democratic principles which haven't 
their proportion of influence in the present order of things, 
and that it is our business to get busy making them plain, 
and finding out how to rectify the ratio. After we have fought 
our way to the concession of so much, the rest is going to be 
a matter of progressive adjustment at a thousand different 
points. Society is not likely to reform itself by accepting a 
present of somebody's ready-made garments." 

"My conscience has been troubling me," Hartley once 
more joined in, with a suspicious inflection, "about the stag- 
ger at a confession that my cousin made just now. It started 
off as though it meant to amount to something, but it hedged 
so disgracefully that I feel bound to let out the whole truth. 
The entire affair, Graham, was an ambush contrived by these 
women to make you fight at a disadvantage. Before you are 
led in any further, it is my duty to tell you that Miss Kinzie 
is not only a minion of capital on general principles, but that 
she is a not inconsiderable fraction of the Avery Company 
itself." 

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BETWEEN ERAS 



THE RENEGADE 



Graham's embarrassment did not have to be pretended ; 
and in spite of Hester's protests that the mean tactics had all 
been on the side of the defense, he declared it would be a mer- 
ciful finish if he could be shot on the spot for conduct unbe- 
coming an officer and a gentleman. On his petition for suf- 
ficient respite to show that he could simulate decent behavior 
by extraordinary effort, he dropped carelessly into his part in 
talk that was safely guiltless of seriousness, until Hartley car- 
ried him off for a meeting with the campaign committee be- 
fore leaving for the evening appointment. 

After dressing for dinner Elsie wrote to her parents : — - 

"My dearest Dears: — 

"It's all off with the philosophy. I've seen a man. Even the letter 
carrier and gas inspector are fading fancies. He's big and boyish, and 
I was going to say brilliant, for the sake of another b, but he isn't that. 
I can't find just the word for him, but perhaps it's assuring. He makes 
you feel as though you wanted to roll up your sleeves and help get the 
housework out of the way all at once, so that everybody could be free to 
enjoy the good time coming. He has a fair chance to be President some 
day. At least Channing Hartley says so, unless there is something in the 
Constitution about ages that will keep him waiting a few years. 

1 ' He 's going to be in Chicago in a week or two, and I asked him to 
come to dinner with us as soon as I get back. I am sure you will like him 
as well as we do. Hester said not to mind her invitation; she'd come 
anyway; only to be sure to give her notice. 

"I forgot to say that his name is Graham; the one who started the 
strike. He said he knew you, Daddychen, but I don 't see why you haven 't 
told Mr. Lyon that there is some mistake, and that he ought to see Mr. 
Graham and settle it. 

"We are just back from Brookline. It all happened at the Hartleys. 
On the way, Hester and I tried to decide whether we should be Grace 
Darling, or the Daughter of the Eegiment, if we turned out to be the 
peacemakers. 

"There is a whole lot of philosophy tangled up in this incident too, 
but I don 't know whether I shall ever unravel it. Anyway, the atmosphere 
seems less stifled than it did, so the altitude theory must be wrong. 

"With a hundred hurried hugs, 

ELSIE. ' ' 



223 



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THE SENTIMENTALIST 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



XIV 

THE SENTIMENTALIST 

'While one of the chief counts in his theoretical indictment 
of the system was that it was mechanical throughout, from 
power house to President's office, with no room for human 
sensibilities, yet after his feelings had been moulded into 
a certain form for a generation, he could not rid himself 
of the hauntings of a thoroughly inconsistent loyalty to 
the Company." 



THE Avery shutdown scheduled for six weeks had extended 
into late summer. 

On the surface neither side had changed its position nor 
improved its prospects. 

While each party counted on depletion of the other's 
resources, as the most reliable feature in its calculations, 
neither had for a moment relaxed its efforts to fortify itself 
for aggressive action. 

So far in the campaign the strikers had furnished the only 
surprise, and if the deliberations of the Avery directors had 
been made public, they would have proved that it was a de- 
velopment for which no one was prepared. It was the un- 
expected moral and financial strength that had rallied to the 
support of the strike. 

Everybody whose judgment counted for anything "on the 
street" had said that, while some strikes had a fighting chance, 
this one had gone out of its way to insure failure. It had 
picked out one of the strongest antagonists in the field, and 
it had risked a fight on the weakest kind of issue. 

The notion that labor would assess itself to wage war for a 
mere abstract idea was on all hands jeered at as too absurd 
to be treated soberly outside of a young ladies' reading circle. 
If a foreman had discharged a drunken loafer, and had re- 
fused to reinstate him, the Company might have to defend 
itself against everybody in the country that wore a union 
button; but if people with good jobs felt able to indulge in 
the luxury of throwing them up because the Company re- 
fused to adopt their particular color scheme for painting the 

227 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



clouds, it would not be long before they would find them- 
selves left to pay for their own esthetics. 

But the predictions had perversely miscarried. Not the 
employees of a single establishment alone had listened to a 
radical idea, and had made up their minds to fight for it, but 
there had been such response to the same idea the country 
over that it already disturbed the plans of the practical poli- 
ticians in state and national machines. 

There was a history behind the movement. It was not the 
impulse of a day. It was the heir of a thousand sporadic and 
seemingly ill-fated theories and experiments. Yet if we could 
see the past in its true perspective we might learn that no peer 
of the impulse now at work had ever been born into the world 
with briefer or less turbulent travail. We might discover that 
progress toward a conscious program of economic democracy 
had been merely the latest demonstration that ordinary men 
are more fully equipped than in any previous period, and 
that whether or not the rich are growing richer and the 
poor poorer, in ability to draw instruction for their own ad- 
vantage from the wisdom of the world the footfaring mil- 
lions have at least been closing up the gap between them- 
selves and the careering few. 

At all events a popular movement much larger than or- 
ganized labor, a movement that temporarily drew organized 
labor into a more inclusive popular program, had adopted the 
idea of which Graham was the most masterful exponent. The 
new conviction was that today, unless it is coupled with 
economic democracy, the political democracy which men a 
century ago regarded as the sufficient guarantee of equal 
freedom is little more than a toy to pacify children. 

Whether the policy had given new life to this old idea, or 
the idea had created the policy, the movement that supported 
the strike seemed further to endorse with equal vigor the pe- 
culiar plan of attack. The Avery strike was promoted as a 
test case. It was not the local employees, nor the men in the 
branch establishments, but democracy at large, against the 
Company. While the strikers were bearing the brunt of the 
fight, a vast multitude of believers in the principles of the 
struggle were perfecting an organization which adopted the 
fight as a popular interest. These backers insured the sup- 
plies, and they might at any moment for strategic reasons 
shift the battle ground to any other industrial centre. 

228 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



People who had made no predictions, who had simply 
watched the facts, and analyzed their meaning, had begun 
to suspect that they were observing the birth of a new epoch. 
The syndication of capital was forcing the sydication of peo- 
ple ; but as is always the case with a popular movement, com- 
paratively few of the supporters of the new impulse clearly 
perceived what it involved. Although they idealized their 
enterprise in a hundred variations of "democracy against 
plutocracy," when the meaning of the slogan was examined 
it turned out that the majority were simply struggling against 
a special class of their fellow men. The few who stood aside 
and reflected on the conflict saw that it was more than a strug- 
gle of men with men. The demand that all sorts and condi- 
tions of men should be admitted to a share in the control of 
capital implied the purpose, which would later become con- 
scious, to terminate the primacy of capital as an impersonal 
interest, and to absorb and distribute it as a proportional in- 
cident of all personal interests. 

In the beginning David Lyon had entertained no doubt 
that it would be an easy matter to starve out the strike. When 
six weeks had not sufficed, it was a mere detail to decide that 
a little further patience was the cheapest and surest policy. 
But two facts of almost equal significance had compelled sud- 
den reversal of plans. Barclay had forwarded information 
which he had carefully verified, that a rival company was 
already incorporated under the laws of New Jersey. Double 
the Avery capital had been pledged. It was controlled by 
dangerously strong men, who saw an opportunity to capture 
the Avery market. The location had been selected, and plans 
for the plant accepted. Construction might begin at any 
moment. 

The other fact was the failure of the Company's agents to 
get ahead in securing new help. Wherever laborers of the 
class needed were approached, they were found to be fully 
posted about the strike, and either in active sympathy with 
it or sure that the chances were too much against them if they 
tried to better themselves by becoming strike-breakers. Be- 
tween strikers and competitors the Company was rudely 
roused from its composed contentment to let things take their 
time coming its way. Among themselves the directors 
acknowledged that they had on their hands a struggle for ex- 

229 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



istence. They must either begin soon to fill orders, or allow 
new investors to put them out of business. 

It was promptly decided to start up the plant at once; to 
notify the tenants of the Company's houses that they must 
either immediately report for work or vacate; and to force 
the plans for delivering help from every direction. Parley 
and preparation were past. It was now the tug of war. 

So far as the strike-leaders could control, personal violence 
was ruled out of the campaign. On the other hand, no strike 
ever commanded a more elaborate system of boycotting for 
every one, from the milk man to the railroads, who had any 
dealings with the Company or the new men it might employ. 

But these larger factors were not the only forces which 
were likely to share in turning the fortunes of war. There 
were subtler influences, some of them too trifling to be re- 
ported to the Board, that were making the moral conditions 
which would presently turn the scale. One of these trivial 
incidents, which had an accidental bearing on the course of 
the struggle, was Kissinger's personal and domestic problem. 

Soon after Graham's return he had arranged a second meet- 
ing with Kissinger, and then a third. In brief the result was 
mutual understanding that the subject must be dropped till 
the end of the strike. Kissinger believed in Graham's pro- 
gram. He saw no way to approach the ideals which for him 
meant justice and progress, unless people of like mind with 
himself would volunteer to work in the right direction. But 
he was a creature of routine and habit and tradition. He was 
distracted by a double duty. For the first time in his life 
he squarely confronted the alternatives of principle and prece- 
dent. When he had abandoned the profession selected for 
him by his parents, the choice was merely between two poli- 
cies on the same moral level. It was a question of which 
would turn out best for his selfish interests. Besides, he was 
nearly twenty-five years younger then, with congenital cau- 
tion not yet confirmed by a quarter-century of stereotyped 
conformity to system. While one of the chief counts in his 
theoretical indictment of the system was that it was mechan- 
ical throughout, from power house to President's office, with 
no room for human sensibilities, yet after his feelings had 
been moulded in a certain form for a generation he could not 
rid himself of the hauntings of a thoroughly inconsistent loy- 
alty to the Company. Probably closer analysis of this in- 

230 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



fluence would have resolved it into personal loyalty to certain 
officers of the company, and feelings of comradeship toward 
some of his associates. At all events his feeling was obstinate 
that he had obligations to his position. From his theoretical 
point of view there was only impertinence and fallacy in the 
compunctions begotten of his military training; yet practi- 
cally they were irresistible. He could not reason coldly enough 
to chase out of his conscience the accusation that leaving the 
Company now would be desertion in the face of the enemy. 

On the other side, the moral value of such an idyllic sense 
of honor arrested Graham's zeal and disarmed his reasoning. 
He feared that a man who remained negatively wrong so 
conscientiously might be worth more to the world than by 
doing the positive right, if that brought him under convic- 
tion of sin. At any rate he was not vandal enough to covet 
the tarnished glory of procuring a conversion from such 
wrong to such right. By mutual consent, therefore, the whole 
matter was suspended until the end of the strike should open 
a way to reconsider the subject on its merits. 

By a still more intricate process Graham found himself 
halted in another direction; and he was not altogether sur- 
prised that the second arrest returned to his thoughts oftener 
and more vividly than the first. Hester and Elsie had been 
at the Hartley's when he called after his circuit was finished, 
and Elsie's invitation had been repeated. Graham men- 
tioned to Kissinger that he had met his daughter twice in 
Boston, but he did not feel at liberty to inquire about her 
return. He even had time a little later to reflect that, by re- 
jecting his proposition outright, Kissinger might have cleared 
away certain limitations of his freedom which were now as 
imperative as they were inconvenient. 

There were moments, once or twice there were hours, when 
Mrs. Kissinger's extravagant agitation tended to provoke her 
husband to the opposite extreme. She had taken instant and 
feverish alarm at the possibilities suggested by Elsie's meeting 
with Graham. She said that the Hartleys, and perhaps even 
Hester, might safely risk the consequences of putting them- 
selves on an equality with vulgar people, but that Elsie could 
not afford such compromising indiscretions. She assumed 
that nothing could be said in Graham's favor, since Chicago 
society regarded him as an undesirable citizen. If the scru- 

231 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



pies which alone influenced her husband had been explained 
to her, she would have welcomed them as makeweights, al- 
though they would have been without effect upon her mind 
if they had happened to interfere with her estimates of social 
utility. While Mrs. Kissinger was obliged to recognize sev- 
eral grades of nobility within the charmed circle which she 
called society, all outside the pale, when the possibility of con- 
signment to that no-man's land was associated with her own 
family, were an undifferentiated rabble of ignobility. Gra- 
ham was by choice one of this herd of the impossible. Be- 
yond the fortunate detail that some of them used a little more 
soap than others, Mrs. Kissinger would have been at a loss to 
mention offhand marks of discrimination which would dis- 
tinguish certain of this unhallowed multitude as less inferior 
and ineligible than the rest. 

Mrs. Kissinger had little other thought of the strike than 
that it was merely a varied form of essentially the same van- 
dalism as burglary and murder. Yet her letters to Elsie made 
no reference to moral taint from acquaintance with a striker, 
but simply to loss of social rating. This seemed to her so cer- 
tain that her fears were beyond control. She dismissed her 
usual discretion. Instead of disapproving and discouraging, 
she repudiated, and forbade, and vetoed and prohibited in 
so many different keys, that a less spirited girl than Elsie 
might have been provoked from indifference to resolution. 
The excess of her mother's energy however, was sedative in 
its effects upon the daughter, for it stimulated her sense of 
humor rather than her active resistance. She assured her 
mother that with proportional increase of insurance on the 
house, and a platoon of mounted police to patrol the block, 
with a private detective or two at each door and window, there 
would be no extraordinary risk in Graham's call; but if it 
would still overtax the family neurology she would forego the 
experiment. 

Mrs. Kissinger was not affected by that sort of irony, and 
she did not allow the march of domestic events to drag. Not 
many hours after her return to Chicago Elsie wrote : — 

"My dear Mr. Graham: — 

"If you were a mere individual, it would be hard to write what my 
recently discovered duty dictates. It has been impressed upon me that you 
are an Institution. As the case has been presented to me, Institutions at 
best have no souls. At worst they are so bad that people who lay claim to 
souls must not associate with them. In my mother's mind you have no 

232 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



existence as a person. You are Eevolution. You are Anarchy. You are 
Subversion of Society. In other words, you are no better in her eyes than 
Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry would have been to a Tory dame of '76. 
No self-respecting, and particularly no Society-respecting member of Soci- 
ety could receive such an Institution into her house. It is not quite clear 
to me why one should expect a bad, soulless Institution at the same time 
to be sufficiently an individual to sympathize with the embarrassment of 
another individual. Without trying to find the answer, I confess that I 
think you will understand my mother 's wishes, even if I do not accept her 
opinions. I will not try to smooth over this frank statement of the reason 
for not giving a date to my invitation. 

' ' You may get the impression that I am always as tractable, and there- 
fore a model daughter. At the present moment I am so subdued that I 
cannot rest under even that imputation. If my defense had been stronger 
I might have been rebellious. What could I do when my purpose actually 
was to make the obnoxious Institution and not the individual the guest of 
honor? I am not a pervert, but I shall continue to pay attention. 

"Very truly, 

"ELSIE KISSINGER." 

And Graham answered: — 

"My dear Miss Kissinger: — 

' ' Permit me to present my respects to your mother, with the assurance 
that while I have no appeal from her decision, its justice would have been 
less doubtful if it had rested on disapproval of the individual rather than 
of the Institution. As the matter stands, the problem of the contents of 
the platter between Jack Spratt and his wife was easy compared with my 
plight between Mrs. Kissinger and her daughter. The former will have 
none of the Institution. The latter graciously intimates that she will have 
naught else. Unfortunately for me a non- detachable union between what 
little there is of individual and Institution has not yet succeeded in mak- 
ing much headway for either; but their only hope is in sticking by each 
other to the end. My recollection is that it was a good many years before 
the like of the Adamses and the Henrys got the privilege of treading the 
hall rugs of the Tory dames ; but the world moves faster in these days, and 
if the Institution shows new energy, one of the reasons not given to the 
public will be the motive to make good for the sake of breaking down 
barriers against the individual. In pursuing its mission to uplift the 
world, the Institution will be kept mindful by the individual of your 
obdurate mother and your partially convinced self. It would be only fair 
play if the Institution should a little later find a way to speak a good 
word for the individual. 

"Sadder, wiser, but still in the tourney, 

"JOHN GRAHAM." 

Except as a last resort, Mrs. Kissinger seldom called upon 
the titular head of the household for help in making the social 
plans of the family. His cue was to accept previously settled 
programs, and to bear the imputed unrighteousness of failure 
to arrive, for which he could have had only mystical responsi- 
bility. In this instance Mrs. Kissinger prejudged the situa- 
tion with more than usual finality, and she put corresponding 

233 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



vigor into her demand upon her husband to endorse her de- 
cision. Kissinger had never before been so clearly aware of 
the difference between his wife's ideas and his own ; but they 
happened to agree on the inexpediency of social relations with 
Graham under the present circumstances ; yet Kissinger was 
more uncomfortable in this agreement with his wife than in 
most of their differences of opinion. Her reasons were so 
unlike his that he could not support her objections to Gra- 
ham without sacrifice of principle, unless he was willing to 
be drawn into full explanation. He had no taste for the sort 
of profitless arguments which always grew out of attempts to 
arrive at understandings with his wife on generalities. He 
knew that it would do no good to discuss Graham and Gra- 
hamism in the abstract with his wife, nor was he ready to tell 
her the whole story. 

Although he foresaw that silence now would make it all the 
harder to disarm his wife's reproaches if he should ever de- 
cide to follow his convictions, Kissinger took the chance of 
future difficulty for the sake of present comfort ; and instead 
of expressing himself directly he resorted as usual to satirical 
thanks for the compliment implied in the form of referring 
to him for promotion of Mrs. Kissinger's social prearrange- 
ments. 

The eviction order operated as an incubator upon Kissin- 
ger's half-born resolutions. He knew some of the men who 
would have to leave the homes they had occupied for years. 
Right and wrong, as he saw them, could not have been more 
sharply defined than in the contest between the proper rights 
of these men and their treatment by the arbitrary power of the 
Company. It required this impersonation of his theories to give 
Kissinger the necessary impulse for action. He felt that 
if these employees were driven from their homes he could not 
continue to serve the Company without becoming a partner 
in the wrong. When the evils that he had impotently 
brooded over were thus brought to his own charge, and not 
in the form of abstract sentiment, but in the person of fellow 
employees, men whom he had known for years, and whom 
he believed to have an equity in the Company as good as that 
of stockholders or officers, his hesitation at last passed into de- 
termined contempt for the flimsiness of the reasons that had 
so long secured his acquiescence. He decided that his weak- 

234 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SENTIMENTALIST 



ness had not been chiefly from romantic loyalty to his em- 
ployers, nor from fear of the risk he would run in giving up 
security for uncertainty. He found that in the last resort 
neither of these considerations restrained him as much as his 
distaste for the disagreement he must encounter in his own 
home. Summing it all up, the best he could say for himself 
was that he had been too easy-going to face the fuss it would 
cost to change the even tenor of his ways. However he might 
shrink from the process of withdrawing from his position in 
the office, and much as he dreaded the task of adapting him- 
self to new requirements, these obstacles together deterred him 
less than the inevitable awakening of the dormant disunity 
in his family. Kissinger was not made of stern stuff. His 
moral courage was of the sort that preferred suffering the 
pains of self -suppression to outbreaking conflict even in self- 
defense. Peace was more to him than progress. Although 
goaded finally by a clear sense of duty, he might still have 
shirked, if he had not discovered that Elsie was on his side, 
and that Hester was likely to play an important part in 
neutralizing Mrs. Kissinger's opposition. 



235 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



XV 
THE TRANSFORMATION 

"As a matter of fact, the world never possessed an absolutely 
infallible automatic consumer of human rights until it 
invented capitalism." 

WHY Kissinger was moved to make his decision known 
first to Logan Lyon rather than to his father was not 
altogether clear to himself. This was his choice, however, and 
he put a note on Lyon's desk, asking for a half -hour's talk 
before he left the office. Kissinger was the older, and his con- 
tacts with the Company's attorney had been rare except in the 
course of strict routine. Never before had Kissinger felt im- 
pelled to ask the confidence of the son about a matter that 
primarily concerned the father. The Secretary was familiar 
enough with the imperious manner of the President of the 
Company. He had often seen him dictatorial to the verge 
of violence, but he was not afraid of him. He knew that Mr. 
Lyon was as just in his intentions as he was dogmatic in his 
decisions, and that he was gentle in spirit even when immova- 
ble in purpose. 

The clue to Kissinger's exceptional indirection was less in 
his desire to avoid his superior's wrath than in his habitual 
study to shield him from annoyance. He did not rate him- 
self as essential to the Company, nor even to Mr. Lyon ; yet 
he knew that he had made himself sufficiently useful to be 
valued, and that his defection at the present moment would 
be peculiarly irritating. He knew further that Mr. Lyon was 
likely to treat any brief statement which he might make as a 
confession of disloyalty if not treachery, and that an attempt 
to argue the case would be sharply repulsed. He had no rea- 
son to suppose that Logan Lyon's opinion would differ from 
his father's; but on the other hand a statement to the son 
would not be equally embarrassed by personal considerations. 
Kissinger hoped that Lyon would prefer to make such a re- 
port to his father of the substance of their talk that the un- 
pleasantness of the necessary interview might be partially re- 
lieved. 

In his private office, after the day's business was closed, 
Logan Lyon waited with not a little curiosity for an explana- 

239 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



tion of the Secretary's unusual request. Kissinger had care- 
fully thought out what he wanted to say, and he tried to go 
straight to the point. His introduction was intended to be as 
literal as a Euclidean theorem. "I have decided to resign my 
position, Mr. Lyon, and without knowing exactly why, I felt 
that it might be better to tell you the whole story before I had 
to speak to your father." 

Nothing further was needed to convince Lyon that the 
matter was important. From the strictly business point of 
view such an incident would ordinarily have been too petty 
for his notice. Hundreds of times he had said himself or had 
assented to others' saying, "Men are plenty enough." As the 
stock phrase rang in his mind, however, like an automatic 
busy signal shutting off a call, he as quickly answered him- 
self with the equally trite proverb: — "but so are children; 
yet one prefers one's own." Lyon knew how much his father 
valued Kissinger, and how hard it would be at his time of 
life to be comfortable in getting similar work out of a substi- 
tute. The same half-conscious motive that had sent Kissinger 
to him at once enlisted his interest in the errand, and without 
a word in reply his manner certified that he would be attentive 
to particulars. 

The plunge once taken, Kissinger's premeditated program 
was for a moment disarranged. Ingenuousness was "large" 
with him, as the phrenologists used to say ; while tact was an 
acquired form rather than an indwelling spirit. It was a part 
of his equipment only so far as it had been drilled into him 
by discipline. It did not spring from his disposition. He 
was too conscientious to be discreet. He was apt to make a 
clean breast of the worst, with consequent buffetings by seas 
of fussy troubles largely of his own creating. 

"I may as well say frankly to start with, Mr. Lyon," Kis- 
singer hurried on, as if anxious to put burned bridges be- 
tween himself and retreat, "this strike has made me see that 
I don't belong here any longer. My heart is with the strike, 
not with the Company. I must give you the further details that 
I have had a number of talks with Graham himself since the 
strike began, and I believe in him. He is on the track of the 
right way to solve labor problems, or rather to make them 
impossible. He has made me a proposition that I can accept 
when the time comes, and it will give me a chance to work the 
rest of my life with my convictions instead of against them." 

240 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



Lyon's professional restraint was gone in a flash, and he 
was on his feet glaring at Kissinger as though at the next move 
he would throttle him. That Kissinger held secessionist eco- 
nomic opinions was surprising enough; but the manner of 
them, as evidenced by his own words, was intolerable. "Do 
you mean to tell me that in the thick of this fight you are 
deserting to Graham?" 

Kissinger was aware in an instant that he had put the 
wrong foot foremost; and in his zeal to tell the whole truth, 
as it made both for and against himself, he went farther in 
extenuation than he had intended before his blunder. "In 
justice to myself," he expostulated eagerly, "I should have 
started by saying that I refused to consider the proposition till 
after the strike ends, although Graham's plan promises me 
the chance of my life ; and I am reporting my decision to you, 
not to him. In justice to Graham I should say that he of- 
fered no objection to putting off the proposition till it would 
be clear of all entanglement with our fight. Not a word has 
passed between us about this particular skirmish. He is work- 
ing out a campaign that will go on, whatever comes of the 
Avery Company affair. In my way I am as interested as he 
in that main campaign. My sentiment for the Company 
won't let me go to the other side though till the point of at- 
tack has changed; but I am no longer able to carry out the 
Company's orders, and it is up to me to state the facts and get 
an honorable discharge." 

Lyon could hardly have been more astonished if one of the 
calculating machines had begun to give out theories in eco- 
nomics. He had never suspected that this plodding, me- 
chanical, taciturn man had a sufficient reserve of imagina- 
tion to impeach existing conditions. He was reassured, how- 
ever, as quickly as he had been excited, that Kissinger's be- 
havior toward the Company had been strictly correct; and 
with prompt acknowledgment that he was satisfied on that 
score he settled himself to hear the rest of the story. 

As Kissinger went on to explain the meaning of his de- 
cision, he was surprised to find that it was easier to talk about 
than he had expected. Lyon showed no further sign of im- 
patience. Half a dozen times he interrupted with a direct 
question, and again he more than once joined in making the 
explanation complete by indirectly prompting: — ''I'm not 
quite sure that I get your meaning there, Mr. Kissinger." 

241 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



If he had been a physician listening to an account of a 
patient's symptoms he could hardly have seemed more at- 
tentive to every particular. Kissinger had no reason to sus- 
pect that the attorney had any tolerance for the views them- 
selves. He interpreted Lyon's courtesy rather as a recogni- 
tion of his personal loyalty to the head of the Company. He 
put all the stress he could on reiteration that he neither ex- 
pected nor hoped to promote his selfish interests by a change 
of position. He gave the Company credit for the best treat- 
ment any employee could demand on strict business princi- 
ples, and he tried to make it plain that he was acting not on 
the impulse of a private grievance, but because he believed in 
an idea which the Company could not accept; and because he 
had to choose between working as a servant of the Company 
to defeat his own beliefs, and claiming his freedom to do his 
best in the interest of his faith. 

There was no index by which Kissinger could detect un- 
derneath Lyon's impassive bearing, after the first outburst, a 
contradiction between the official and the man. He had no 
means of knowing that Lyon not only felt the force of the 
abstract logic of his position, but was tempted to tell him so. 
During a long pause, after Kissinger seemed to have fin- 
ished, Lyon made no sign of reply except by keeping his eyes 
fixed on Kissinger as though they might penetrate to some 
meaning that had not come through the ear. Kissinger in- 
ferred only that the attorney might be trying to decide how 
to report the case in a way that would least disturb his father. 
At most he might be considering whether the incident would 
be closed when the inconvenience to his father had been dis- 
counted; or whether it should be regarded as a symptom 
which indicated something about the prospects of the strike. 
When Lyon spoke he gave Kissinger the impression that he 
was concerned merely about ending the matter without a 
scene. 

"If you were in my father's place, Mr. Kissinger, what 
would you do under the circumstances?" 

"In your father's place, and with his views," Kissinger 
answered promptly, "of course there is but one thing to do. 
I should be very glad though if he felt like recognizing my 
regard for him personally, and my attempts to fill my place 
during all these years, enough so that he could say good-bye 

242 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



to me in a friendly spirit, and tell me that he respected my 
motives, even if he could see no justification for my opinions." 

"If it were a matter between you and my father only," 
Lyon continued, very much as though he were trying to find 
the basis for a trade, "he might be able to disregard the opin- 
ions, and make it possible for you to keep your position in 
spite of them. But he must be told that you have had deal- 
ings with Graham, and he could no more answer to the Com- 
pany, if he kept you in your position, than a bank president 
could who allowed a subordinate to be on friendly terms with 
a cracksman." 

It was Kissinger's turn to be excited. Lyon had never be- 
fore seen him bristle with indignation, but in his newly de- 
clared independence as a man the Secretary had shed the 
deference of the employee. Yet before the anger had found 
words, Lyon's show of surprise pointed to misconstruction of 
his meaning, and Kissinger merely protested: — "I hoped, Mr. 
Lyon, that my statement went far enough to free me from sus- 
picion of playing for a higher bid." 

"I gave you a wrong impression, Mr. Kissinger," Lyon re- 
tracted heartily. "I meant to imply nothing of that sort. I 
was merely thinking of my father's side of it, and that he 
would have no fear of treachery from you. I wish for his sake 
you had either kept away from Graham, or had not thought 
it necessary to give me that part of the details." 

Kissinger saw that he had not yet made his position clear 
to Lyon, and the fact gave him his first definite perception 
that the currency of his idealism was subject to heavy dis- 
count when offered as a medium of exchange in the market. 
He felt as though he had undertaken to make a fourth dimen- 
sion intelligible, or a sixth sense. With no wavering in his con- 
viction, but with glimmering appreciation of the difficul- 
ties of bringing it within the range of practical calculation, 
he braced himself for a strenuous attempt to make his ideal 
visible if not convincing. 

"You do not get my point at all, Mr. Lyon, if you suppose 
that any arrangement which your father could make would 
tend in the least to meet my needs. No mere alteration of de- 
tails under the present system of doing business would go to 
the heart of the matter. There is no place for me in business 
until the whole system is revolutionized. To put it bluntly, I 
am just admitting to myself that I have been a slave for years, 

243 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



but it was a slavery to a regime that I saw no way to change. 
It gave me as good a living as I deserved, but it denied my 
right to a man's share of influence on the business in which 
he earns his living. I should probably have been the patient 
ox to the end, if the system had not laid on me the last straw 
in the shape of its order to be its agent in evicting that colony 
of my fellow slaves. I know some of those men who have 
worked in the shops as long as I have been in the office. Their 
work has been as necessary in its way to the prosperity of the 
Company as yours or your father's. It is simply legalized 
fist-right that gives the Company power to send them into 
exile. They have a moral equity in their homes and in their 
jobs which has as clear a claim at the bar of social justice as 
the Company's legal equity in any dollar of its property. By 
the law's decree the Company has an arbitrary ex parte power 
over some of the moral rights of its help. It is as wicked to use 
that power to separate those men from their homes and their 
work, which they have made part of themselves, as it would 
be to banish them from their wives and children. I shall not 
be a man till I am free to work for all I am worth against a 
system that tolerates such inhumanity. I want liberty to 
count for what is in me toward vindicating the principle that 
all workers are partners. I don't know whether American 
business men are fools or hypocrites when they get hot at the 
Czar for not letting the Russians have a hand in their own 
politics, and in the next breath get hotter at Americans for 
wanting a hand in their own business. Politics is only the 
packing case of business anyway. Why are rights to handle 
the boxings and burlaps worth bothering about if there is no 
right to the goods inside? The claim of every man who works, 
to a share in the ownership and control of his work, rests at 
last on the same ground as the claim of every man who helps 
maintain the laws to a share in making and enforcing the 
laws. Democracy in government is only a blind unless it is 
carried out to the logical result of democracy in business. You 
might just as well attempt to divide the management of trans- 
portation between a democracy for roadbeds and an oligarchy 
for rolling stock. There is no stopping place for democracy 
till every full grown man has a man's full share in managing 
all the world's arrangements that touch his interests. The 
only power that one man can have at last over another man 
in a democracy is the power either of the expert or of the 

244 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



official. In either case, society's judgment of its own welfare, 
not the individual's self-interest, must make the rules to gov- 
ern expert or official in the use of his position. Democracy is 
an insult to human intelligence unless it means progressive 
elimination of all arbitrary power of one man over another. 
Our present system of property is an artificial invention that 
delivers the many into the hands of the few. A righteous sys- 
tem of property will rest on work only, and one kind of work 
will create as valid claim as another to stock in the world's 
opportunities. Our present business principles assume that 
we have gone as far as we can toward securing human rights. 
As a matter of fact, the world never possessed an absolutely 
infallible automatic consumer of human rights until it in- 
vented capitalism. Our capitalistic system is a siphon that 
sucks up men's rights by a law of accelerated motion. Simply 
give it time and let it alone and it would end before very long 
in having every cubic inch of land, sea, and sky bonded to a 
clique of financiers, and then the terms under which the rest 
of the human race might be permitted to stay on the earth 
could be dictated in the licenses granted at their own price 
by the syndicate. Because human wills in the last resort are 
stronger than habits, and sentiments, and logic and laws, this 
thing won't work out. Men will stand it up to some limit that 
no one can predict. Then they will rebel. Whether they 
have a theory thought through by that time to expose the 
fallacy of this capitalistic program or not, they will some day 
rise up in their might and declare that the earth shall belong 
to men, and capital shall be reduced to its place in the ranks 
of tools. For years these things have been brooding in my 
mind with no prospect of anything practical hatching from 
them. I see now where I can keep on earning a living, and at 
the same time make my work count toward the future free- 
dom, instead of forging more links in the chains of slavery. 
It's a sorry figure one cuts at best, obliged to confess that one 
has lived nearly half a century without ever daring to be 
quite one's self. The other side of it is that most of the human 
race are not yet far enough along to suspect their humiliation. 
It is something to arrive at the feeling that one has a soul and 
that it has a right to assert itself. For me the Avery Company 
means the wrong side of the irrepressible conflict between capi- 
talism and democracy. I should like nothing better than to 
work with the men in the Company, if they could transfer 

245 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



their allegiance to the human side. As that is out of the ques- 
tion, I shall get my first taste of real freedom when I am fully 
enlisted in the other camp." 

Neither Kissinger's resolution alone nor the profession of 
faith behind it would have been likely to impress on Lyon the 
feeling of a new sensation. The apparent metamorphosis of 
this monosyllabic man, however, this prosaic pursuer of rou- 
tine, into a rhetorician and a rhapsodizer and a revolutionist, 
was a psychological paradox at least, whether it might be 
worth notice otherwise or not. As he listened, Lyon had 
found himself wondering whether something of the same sort 
may have been the basis of fact that had passed into the New 
Testament tradition of the gift of tongues. Not what Kissin- 
ger believed, but the way he believed it, might have made a 
less open mind than Lyon's speculate whether such amiable 
faith could be altogether out of tune with reality. While 
Lyon noted every word of Kissinger's monolgue, Barclay and 
Dexter came back to his thoughts, with their fighting version 
of life. Then Halleck, and Graham, and Edgerly and Hester 
Kinzie seemed to chord in with Kissinger's voice. Lyon hu- 
mored the conceit that the confusion of notes was a sort of 
tone-rebus ; a parody of the problem that for months had been 
haunting the background of his reflections, — Is conflict 
the main undercurrent of life or is it harmony ? 

Before Kissinger had started on this peroration Lyon had 
set down the business side of the episode as a closed incident. 
He did not see at once how he could reduce its annoying ef- 
fects upon his father to a minimum, but he had all night for 
that problem, and with these two factors in the case tempo- 
rarily disposed of he gave himself license to improve the oc- 
casion for giving rein to his investigating interest, and allow- 
ing himself to dally a while with Kissinger on the plane of 
purely abstract theory. 

It was not merely trifling, however, either with Kissinger 
or with himself. The strike so far had confirmed Lyon in 
the opinions which had been his platform before it was de- 
clared. He had seen no outlook for an alternative. At the 
same time the "unavailable" in his opinions had gradually 
assumed the character of a factor that possibly might have to 
be reckoned with. If he had taken strict account of his im- 
pressions after the season's costly experience, he would have 

246 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



discovered a larger element of fear, or perhaps it would be truer 
to say of suspicion, that the factors which he had dismissed 
as "un available" were the very elements in the situation which 
changing circumstances were forcing to the front. It might 
be possible that the chief business problem of our era was ad- 
justment to these same "unavailable" factors. He had not ex- 
pected light on the problem from Kissinger, but the thought 
that he might be symptomatic, that he might be a sign of so- 
cial currents which had not been rated at their full force, 
made it worth while to go back of his individual connection 
with the Company, and to treat him as an index of general 
conditions. When he spoke, Lyon gave Kissinger the im- 
pression that he had checked off his affair as settled, and was 
opening another question : — 

"I shall have to consider," Lyon said reflectively, "before I 
am sure of the best way to present this to my father. Leave 
word with Hichborn that you will not be at the office for a 
day or two and that he is to report in your place. I will advise 
you further tomorrow. But for my own curiosity, Mr. Kis- 
singer, I want to ask whether you really think these fine sen- 
timents can ever have any practical application to business. 
Or in making this new departure, do you think of yourself 
as getting out of business and taking up the employment of 
an experimenter in philanthropy?" 

Kissinger was not at all disturbed by the challenge. Indeed 
it was a relief for him to dismiss the practical aspects of the 
subject and to pass into the realm of theory. Here he felt him- 
self at home. No one had a right to prescribe his thoughts. 
His judgment was as free as another's. There was something 
like compensation for his subordinate rank as a business fac- 
tor, in having opinions that would be ridiculed on the street ; 
in feeling sure that he was right and the street wrong ; and in 
believing that time would justify his estimate of things. It 
gave a sense of superiority to people limited by capitalistic 
standards, like that which a civilized man would feel toward 
savages, even if he were their prisoner. Beyond this, in meet- 
ing Lyon on the level of pure theory, he felt that he was free 
of obligations that had been heavy ballast in their previous 
relations. He no longer felt responsible either for justification 
or defense or persuasion. As far as he knew, Lyon was im- 
mune to his type of democratic sympathies, and talking with 

247 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



him about them would be like two enemies under a flag of 
truce discussing the ultimatum which neither expected to 
change except by resuming hostilities. Kissinger met Lyon's 
question, therefore, in a quite different attitude from that in 
which he had begun the interview. The relations of the two 
men were altered. Kissinger dropped into the casual man-to- 
man tone of a confidential communication affected by no 
other motive than sheer interest in the ideas; and he was 
conscious that Lyon on the other hand waived his official po- 
sition and accepted the neutral situation. 

"If we were navigating a ship, Mr. Lyon," Kissinger began, 
in an indirect style that sustained Lyon's surprise, "and if we 
found that our compass was disturbed by some force that we 
couldn't calculate, would we call it practical navigation to 
reckon the best we could with the causes of the deviations?" 

"I see what you mean," assented Lyon, "but can you make 
out a parallel?" 

"Perhaps not exactly" returned Kissinger, in a tentative 
tone, as though he were revising a hasty expression, "still I 
think the two cases are at bottom alike. The current phrase 
'the social unrest,' stands for a lot of ugly facts. Whether we 
have any theories to explain them or not, they must be 
counted with. As I see it, a policy of trying to find out how 
to cancel as much of the social unrest as possible out of the 
business situation would no more be changing business into 
charity than seamanship is turned into philanthropy by al- 
lowing for the variations of the compass." 

"That's a catchy way to put it," returned Lyon, with an 
incredulous shrug, "but it's a weak prop for a revolution. So 
far as calculating variations is concerned, business has to 
correct more cranky compasses every hour in the day than 
sailormen ever dream of. What you really have to go on 
when you talk about correcting errors is an impossible ambi- 
tion to correct facts. The world is full of infinitely unequal 
people. Business is what it has to be as a result of these ine- 
qualities. Your 'social unrest' simmers down to a demand for 
tearing business to pieces and starting from the bottom on the 
assumption that all these unequal people are equal." 

Whenever Kissinger had tried to express his social ideas 
before, it had either been a solitary exercise of his imagination, 
or in the company of kindred spirits whose minds were made 
up in advance, and who held one another to strict account for 

248 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



opinions only when they had something decent to say of ex- 
isting institutions. In such an atmosphere a radicalism that 
had very little to rest upon might pass as plausible. It was a 
different matter to save the same notions from seeming silly 
when the presumption was reversed. Kissinger was not san- 
guine enough to suppose that Lyon was open to conviction, 
but he was anxious to show the attorney for capitalism that 
something remained to be said for democracy. Although he 
could not regard Lyon as a promising subject for missionary 
effort, yet a certain proselyting fervor began to prompt Kis- 
singer's side of the discussion. The new problem of making 
his theories presentable to an unbeliever cautioned him back 
into a prudence of speech which was in equal contrast with 
his novel outburst of zeal and the usual staccato common- 
placeness of his business utterance. In fact, not his words 
only but his ideas seemed almost as strange to himself as he 
thought they must sound to Lyon. 

"If you really think the democratic movement means de- 
mand that unequals shall be equal," began Kissinger experi- 
mentally, "it is no wonder Graham looks impossible to you, 
and you set down the strike as a trifling with fate. Perhaps it 
is work enough for one era in civilization to clear a fraction of 
the confusion out of our notions of human equality and 
inequality. 

"Let me take myself as a sample democrat. I suppose I 
understand what is going on in the minds of men farther 
along down in the economic scale than you do. I am nearer 
to them, and see things from nearer their standpoint. Judg- 
ing partly from what I meet in them and more from what I 
find it myself, you put a completely wrong construction on 
the underlying democratic motive. I know that your father 
would be a more valuable factor in business than I could be, 
under any system that approached the present complexity. 
His judgment is reliable where I wouldn't trust my own. 
Without a brain like his at the centre, a big business would 
soon begin to go hard for all concerned; and that would be 
true, as far as I can see, in any kind of society that might take 
the place of the present order. 

"On the other hand, your father would be worth less than I 
am to the business if he had to do my work, and I suppose 
there are easily a thousand men in the employ of the Com- 
pany in ordinary times who would discount either of us if 

249 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



we had to work along side of them at their own jobs. Whether 
under any circumstances all men could ever learn to do the 
same thing equally well doesn't seem to me however a prac- 
tical question. There is another sense in which all men are 
equal, and that sense is the mainspring of democracy. We 
are all equal in our interest in being ourselves, with freedom 
from control by other men through force, or fear, or fraud, or 
privilege, or anything else except reason pure and simple." 

The saving clause "not available" came to Lyon's relief in 
full strength; and without a quiver of distrust that at least 
so much ground was secure, he promptly protested this draft 
on his assent. "How often would an army get through a war 
on the winning side if it was run on a democratic plan?" 

Kissinger's imagination was warming with the discus- 
sion, and he began to glow with the excitement of real scout- 
ing service for democracy. He felt more sure of his insight 
into the weakness of the enemy's position than of his own 
ability to make successful dashes to take advantage of the 
openings; yet he was gaining confidence that he could keep 
Lyon from uncovering anything untenable in his own de- 
fenses. At the same time this access of the militant spirit did 
not mislead Kissinger into accepting the implications of 
Lyon's martial analogy. The reply was on his tongue's end 
instantly, and at the same time he made the mental note that 
meeting this form of attack had given him a new group of 
clues to the conditions of the campaign. Without hesitating 
long enough to give a sign that the answer had to be consid- 
ered, he persisted: — 

"But there you're falling back on one of the false premises 
that vitiate the whole capitalistic calculation. Life isn't all 
war, and it isn't even all business. Life is a process of getting 
a fair field for the promotion of all human interests in the pro- 
portion of their merit. War and business are tools that people 
have to use in the course of this process. We have to learn how 
to get the most work out of all the tools of life, business and 
war among the rest. To the extent that we are dependent on 
our tools, we have to submit to the dictation of the conditions 
in which they are capable of their best work. This doesn't 
prove that we are doomed to turn life into a slavery to our 
tools. That is reversing the relation of means and end." 

"I'm trying to follow you clear beyond my depth," inter- 
rupted Lyon. "How are you going to adapt yourself to the 

250 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



necessity of organization in business, which means responsi- 
bility and authority in somebody, and subordination and 
obedience in somebody else, if you are going to get the tool 
value of business; and at the same time have employer and 
employee equal ?" 

"In the same way that we have a constitution and laws of 
the United States and a President to enforce them, yet when 
it comes to individual rights every man in the country has as 
sure a title to his share of them as the President himself. It 
is no more decreed by the nature of things that a business 
must be a military monarchy because it needs organization, 
than it is that the United States must be an oriental despotism 
because we need a Chief Magistrate. It all turns on what 
I hadn't finished saying about equality. I suppose there are 
people in the world who believe that a thousand babies born 
the same day, and given exactly the same chance in life, 
would turn out precisely alike in their character and ability. 
Some people may believe that each of those babies might learn 
to do whatever the others could, and that there would be no 
good reason why one should count as a more important mem- 
ber of society than another. Without going quite that length, 
I believe men are more equally endowed by nature than our 
social conditions give them a chance to show, and that de- 
mocracy is bound to reduce the proportions of this needless 
inequality. I understand Graham to believe the same thing, 
although I imagine he would stop before I would in estimat- 
ing the probable limit of equalization. But whatever turns 
out to be the truth on this point, it isn't what I am at present 
talking about. Suppose we assume that Number 17 in the 
coal-yard gang and the President of the Company rank pre- 
cisely in accordance with the actual inequalities of their 
makeup, and that, in spite of everything men may some day 
learn to do, the remaining differences between men will al- 
ways cover a scale as wide as those extremes. My point is 
that Number 17 in the coal-yard gang is equal to the Presi- 
dent of the Company in right to work out his own salvation 
unhandicapped by the ownership of any other human being." 

"If you mean to join in with the socialistic rant about one 
man owning another in our day," interposed Lyon, with 
symptoms that his tolerance was evaporating, "you are out of 
the region where discussion pays for the breath it wastes. 
Since the era of free contract came in, Number 17 in the coal- 



251 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



yard gang has been as free as the President of the Company, 
or any one else, to go where he pleased and get a better job. 
When people begin to talk about one man owning another 
under our modern laws, it shows me that they have thrown up 
their attempts to sustain their claims with facts, and have 
taken their last stand on an appeal to unreasoning feeling." 

"You simply play into my hand when you put it that way," 
retorted Kissinger, almost dizzy with the delight of uncon- 
strained freedom of debate with Capitalism as he personified 
it in Lyon. "When people of your class resort to the pretense 
that a figure of speech can have only one literal meaning, and 
try to hush up analysis of the social problems by the platitude 
that this literal meaning has no existence in modern life, it 
shows me that they have run short of ammunition and are us- 
ing a 'thus saith the Lord' of their own fixing up as the easiest 
way to cover their retreat. If Number 17 in the coal-yard gang 
and the President of the Company were both thrown on the 
resources that they individually command under our laws, 
regardless of the good-will of any other human being, to find 
a new job, the President of the Company would have several 
million times the freedom of Number 17 to insure himself 
against starvation. Not in the literal legal sense, but in effect, 
one man owns another to just the extent that he can control 
him. On our merits as plain human beings each of us 
owes something to all the rest, because each of us affects the 
ability of all the rest to make headway in working out the 
problem of life. But our system of property gives to the em- 
ploying class an artificial means of commanding the con- 
duct of the employed class. The 'social unrest' that I was 
talking about is not at bottom a kick against the legitimate 
claims of man upon man. It is not a demand for a system that 
shall rob some in order to give charity to others. Not a very big 
fraction of it is a claim that all workers shall have the same 
wage. It is in a word demand for an honest attempt to put 
our property system on a basis that will give each man just 
the influence over other men which belongs to him by virtue 
of his share in human work." 

Lyon had rather rapidly recovered his philosophic temper, 
and while he felt that they were spinning an exceptionally 
fine thread of abstract theory, he was in a frame of mind to 
give Kissinger all the stimulus possible, to see where the argu- 
ment would end. He had a feeling that, whether Kissinger 

252 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



was within sight of the facts or not, something further might 
be not far out of reach about certain things that had been 
referred to in the talk, and he turned the discussion back to 
an earlier point of departure. 

"Suppose we grant all this for the sake of argument, Mr. 
Kissinger," Lyon conceded, "we have not gone very far to- 
ward showing that it can ever have a practical application." 

"That was w 7 hat I was feeling after w T ith my illustration of 
the disturbance of the compass," responded Kissinger. 

He did not know it, but he was facing the same perplexity 
which sooner or later confronts social theorists of the widest 
outlook. After they have analyzed things as they are, and 
have made up their minds about the emotional attitude most 
favorable to promotion of things as they ought to be, they are 
more or less aware that they have shot their bolt. They are 
helpless before the question, What acts that we or anyone else 
can perform would bring people into that emotional attitude ? 
His feelings, rather than a strict process of scientific analysis, 
had brought Kissinger into contact with one of the profound- 
est of social facts, — the debt of every man to the work of other 
men, and the cooperative character of all human effort. In- 
stead of putting him in closer touch with practical men, his 
perception that every business, and life in general, is a part- 
nership in operation, and implies corresponding partnership 
in control, virtually insulated him from actual affairs and 
ordinary currents of thought. Like thousands of wiser social 
philosophers, he was facing the experience of discerning a 
truth with utter distinctness, while helpless to make other 
people either see the truth or act as though it were true. 

Exhilaration had been Kissinger's first reaction in this ini- 
tial experience of an apostolate to the gentiles; yet his judg- 
ment was sobered by instinct more than by reflection 
that for his faith to impress Lyon it must be lifted above sus- 
picion of the taint of extravagance. The sense of responsi- 
bility steadied his vision and stirred him to a reply more po- 
litic, if not more persuasive, than the dogmas which sufficed 
for his own satisfaction. In consequence, it even occurred to 
Lyon that Kissinger might be reconsidering. 

"My belief," resumed Kissinger, "that the application is 
going to come, runs back to this idea. If an interest that all 
men share is baffled by artificial arrangements, the question 
is not whether there is any practical way of satisfying that 

253 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



interest. The real question is, How long will the artificial ar- 
rangements be able to stave off the inevitable readjustment? 
How long will it take for that interest to claim its own, and to 
retire all the accidental hindrances to its satisfaction ? Unless 
we go back to physical interests, that men have in common 
with other animals, I can think of no more universal human 
interest than every man's desire to be his own master ; the 
wish to be independent of the dictation of any other human 
being. Your father was simply acting out every-day human 
nature when he turned down Barclay's suggestion yesterday 
that a merger with the New Jersey people might be the cheap- 
est way to handle that end of the situation. When he shook 
his fists in the directors' faces as though they were the New 
Jersey people trying to force the proposition, and when he 
swore he would die a pauper sooner than tie up his own busi- 
ness, that he had managed all his life, so that he would have 
to run it under orders from somebody else, he was merely 
showing off a little more highly developed form of the same 
interest that every working man feels. Judged not by the 
laws, which are our present best stagger toward a square deal, 
but by the whole of the human process that is gradually show- 
ing us what the laws ought to be, no group of men can have a 
right to own any business in such a way that they have power 
to dispose at will of the lives and fortunes of other men who 
are operating partners in the same business. We have no 
doubt that minority stockholders have property rights which 
the majority must respect. Our laws recognize the principle 
and protect the rights. There are sound reasons why they 
should. We shall some day see that there are equally sound 
reasons for the principle that investing labor in a business is 
just as good ground for property rights in the business as in- 
vesting capital." 

Temperamentally Lyon was a judge rather than an advo- 
cate. Although circumstances had forced him into the role 
of legal champion for a single aggressive corporation, and par- 
tisanship was therefore his profession, it had not become his 
preference. So far as he felt at liberty to act on his personal 
impulse, he was always inclined to take the side of the unrep- 
resented interest. His escapade in the directors' room the day 
the strike was announced, was inconsistent only on the sur- 
face. It was quite in character with his constant impulse to 

254 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



look for the best that might be said by the absent party. He 
had followed his propensity this time in giving the impossi- 
ble a hearing till his sense of fairness, rather than his self-inter- 
est, seemed to accuse him, and to call for an end of the con- 
ference. Kissinger had observed nothing which led him to 
suspect that the attorney's mind was at all divided between 
official policy and abstract opinion; but Lyon had encour- 
aged the airing of social heresies so freely that he had really 
begun to feel like an abettor of conspiracy against things as 
they are. As in his Sunday evening soliloquy with Edgerly, 
facing the question, What is the next thing to do? dissipated 
the mirage of the ought-to-be and restored him to his sched- 
ule habit of affirming life as it is. As he mentally dis- 
missed abstract theory and returned to the level of daily trans- 
actions, there was a parallel change in the quality of his voice. 
The pliant labial softness of the inquirer hardened into the 
metallic finality of the man of affairs. There would have been 
as much incitement to debate in the multiplication table as in 
the form or the substance of his answer: — 

"But meanwhile we have to live and do business in a world 
where nobody recognizes that principle. Practical men deal 
with each other on the basis of facts that everybody accepts. 
We might as well talk about shipping goods via the milky 
way." 

The hint in Lyon's changed tone notified Kissinger that 
the interview was over ; but his courage had been strengthened 
rather than shaken by this test in action with a real opponent, 
and he put the whole zeal of his faith into a final assertion : — 

"When the Americans took their stand on the principle 
'No taxation without representation,' not a man of them could 
foresee how the principle would work out in the Constitution 
of the United States ; but sooner or later every truth creates 
its own application. We can't see just what sort of social 
machinery the principle of the universal partnership of all 
workers is going to create ; but whether we admit it or not the 
principle itself is in the nature of human society, and conflict- 
ing interests will hammer away on one another until all our 
institutions are wrought into a shape that will give the princi- 
ple full scope. The main question between classes today is 
not in the first instance a matter of ways and means. It is the 
question whether they will line up for or against the principle 
that all laborers are partners. We are using fictions for the 

255 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE TRANSFORMATION 



foundations of society till that principle is fully accepted. 
After it has won its way the applications will follow. Men 
will not stop fighting for real justice and real democracy till 
each one's investment of labor for the common weal fixes his 
rights of suffrage and his rights of property." 



256 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



THE NOVICE 



XVI 
THE NOVICE 

"These two weeks burst the shell of Hester's intuition that, 
for her class, relief of distress was less goodness than 
polite evasion of the issue." 



HESTER KINZIE became a factor in the strike from the 
moment of her conclusion that treatment of causes rather 
than effects is the way to social betterment. 

Graham's talks had not struck the same note in the minds 
of the two girls, but they had produced similar results. 

In Elsie the stimulus of a man weighing conventionalities 
in his own scales, and dedicating his strength to purposes ap- 
praised at his own valuation, quickened dormant protest 
against the passivity of her own life, and brought a return of 
unabashed will to work. 

Graham personified to Hester her more special problem. 
He made it real and distinct and insistent. His solution could 
not be taken over bodily into her program of life, but it had 
crystallized her fluid desire to find a solution of her own. He 
seemed to be wrestling with the question, What is the best 
work that one can set one's hand to who has inherited the 
power and privilege that go with wealth? She had long been 
inquiring without effectively answering, Having money has 
one different duties from one having none? 

The reports that came from Chicago lent force to the habit- 
ual impulse of both girls to relieve human need. On the re- 
turn trip they resolved to make a start in finding something 
to do that might help to improve the situation. Like most 
well disposed people with healthy social instincts, their imag- 
ination halted with cases. It did not press farther into the 
meaning of cases as fair fruits of conditions. They offered 
their services as friendly visitors in the Associated Charities 
district that included the Avery works. It was the closest 
approach to finding a fulcrum for moving the world which 
well-meaning young women of their class would know how 
to make. With equal good faith their offer was accepted by 
the Society. 

261 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



Two devoted weeks sufficed to develop the baffling percep- 
tion not that such effort was useless, but that it was a hopeless 
substitute for removal of causes. 

Contact with instances of destitution, and even of pauper- 
ism, merely accentuated the paradox that poverty was less 
puzzling than prosperity. 

First-hand acquaintance with charity workers, and with 
neighbors of families in need of assistance, shifted the appar- 
ent centre of social unrest from the impossible to the compe- 
tent. The persistent motif of discontent was not that no one 
would give help, but that society was in a tangle which kept 
the majority of the self-reliant from doing their best to help 
themselves. It was not a condition of feebleness but of handi- 
capped power. 

These two weeks burst the shell of Hester's intuition that, 
for her class, relief of distress was less goodness than polite 
evasion of the issue. What better could be done was not much 
clearer to her than before, but two or three insights had taken 
shape in her mind, and they had quickened her instinct that 
it was vulgarity not to be in search of more effective measures. 
She was sure that something was out of gear in society. Her 
suspicion had grown stronger that some of the trouble would 
sometime be located in the morals of property. The most 
distinct impression of all was that it was more the duty of 
those who had property than of those who hadn't it to find 
out what was the matter. 

Hester faithfully permitted full freedom to the feminine 
fashion of personalizing abstract problems. In her case, how- 
ever, the foible was exceptional in giving a judicial severity 
to her reflection, which most approaches to social problems 
from the upper side conspicuously lack. Instead of refusing 
to admit that there might be open questions about social prin- 
ciples which touched her interests, Hester habitually treated 
herself as defendant, without presumption of innocence. She 
saw no way to settle social principles till she could give a con- 
clusive account of herself. Without effort of her own, she 
was mistress of millions. She had power to make life harder 
or easier for several thousand human beings. She had never 
done anything for them, but their labor created her income. 
Parts of these facts she had lately discovered. Other parts she 
had taken for granted all her life. The bald statement of 
them, which her latest encounters with life had dictated, nar- 

262 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



rowed her concern with the social problem down to the radical 
question, What gives me a right to my rights ? 

A week-end visit to the Lyons at Lake Geneva was less an 
outing for Hester than an opportunity to push her inquiry. 

The Lyon cottage would have rated as a defacement of the 
scenery, if it had not been so enshrouded by trees that it was 
visible only within its own preserve. Externally it was merely 
a magnified log cabin. It contained, however, all the necessi- 
ties of modern comfort, and some of the luxuries, but none of 
the display. The landscape gardener had enjoyed scope de- 
nied to the architect. The home grounds were the hospitable 
front yard of a model farm. The farm itself was traversed 
by a scheme of park roads, extending several miles inland, 
and converging in a broad avenue that encircled The Lodge. 

It was one of those faultless afternoons of the Indian Sum- 
mer, in which it was easy to remember leniently the rest of the 
year, and to claim for the region the fairest climate in the 
world. After a trip down the lake to church in the morning, 
and the usual Sunday reversion to dinner at noon, the party 
was gathered in a corner of the lawn from which the rovers 
of the miniature sea could be observed through a cloister of 
trees. 

A change had come into the temper of the family. Whether 
permanent or temporary, for the time being it admitted busi- 
ness topics within the domestic circle. Seriousness had al- 
ways been the most obvious finding mark of the Lyons' family 
life, but it was now crossed by an ill-omened tolerance of the 
dreaded subject which had forced its way to the center of at- 
tention. The tact of all combined was not able to keep interest 
aimed long at a time in other directions. The family tradition 
had stood hard on its dignity, but in the last week or two it had 
almost abandoned the field. The strike, or some of its con- 
nections, ruled the thoughts of the whole group, and by tacit 
consent there had been a gradual lifting of the embargo on 
the usually tabooed theme. At first the impertinent topic 
had been remanded after little more than passive admission 
that there was such a thing as labor disturbance; but today 
Hester used a recurrence of the main subject as an opening for 
active inquiry. She had been thinking out the substance 
rather than the form of questions which she wanted to pro- 
pose, and she was hardly more forewarned than her guardian 

263 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



against the first query, "Did it ever occur to you, Uncle David, 
that labor troubles will be stopped when you can eliminate 
me?" 

Unless they were of the obvious order to which common 
usage had given a current value, figures of speech were usually 
objects of suspicion to Mr. Lyon. To minimize risk he chose 
to take the question literally, and he kept well under cover 
with the answer, "I had not heard that you had been mixed 
up with labor troubles, Hester." 

"Then possibly I'm the clue to a comedy of errors," extem- 
porized Hester, while she was trying to adapt her questions to 
this unpremeditated version. "I've been doing a lot of think- 
ing lately, and I have decided that I am the wicked partner. 
You may get an entirely new view of the strike when you find 
out that I am the real grievance." 

Mr. Lyon's habitual complaisance with Hester always al- 
lowed her playfulness liberties which he would have rebuked 
in another. Mrs. Lyon was less liberal. She felt that under 
the circumstances the subject was too dubious for light treat- 
ment. To tell the truth, Edith was of much the same mind, 
although she easily accepted Hester's unexpectedness as an 
offset for her lack of veneration. Logan Lyon and Edgerly 
were about equally divided between amusement at the chill 
which Hester's apparent jauntiness imparted to the atmos- 
phere, and curiosity whether her latest conceit would pres- 
ently disclose an idea. 

Both Mrs. Edgerly and her mother quickly took refuge 
among the magazines of the month, while the two younger 
men swung lazily in their hammocks, with the appearance of 
noticing nothing beyond their cigars. They were really tak- 
ing in every word of the dialogue, and their interest grew 
more alert as they pondered on the probable bearings of the 
argument. 

Hester's fancy plainly gave Mr. Lyon no clue to her mean- 
ing, and on her part it was an economy of effort to become 
more literal. To be less enigmatic she took a new start: — "I 
wish you would explain to me, Uncle David, how anybody 
gets a right to an income from the Avery Company." 

"Why, Hester, by earning it in some way or other." Mr. 
Lyon had a feeling that this was escaping from the absurd to 
the axiomatic. 

264 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



"That is my idea, too, Uncle David," and Hester was sure 
she could make use of the admission; "but can you help me 
find out what I have done to earn my dividends?" 

"Why, that is a different matter of course," Mr. Lyon 
stammered ; and his mind would not have been open to con- 
viction that his "of course" was the exact equivalent of the 
proverbial woman's "because." "You have a right to your 
dividends by inheritance." 

"Yes, Uncle David, I know those words by rote," pursued 
Hester, "but they seem to me merely a way of hushing up the 
difficulty. If the way to get an income is to earn it, what 
right has anyone to invent such a device as inheritance, which 
makes it possible for some people to get an income without 
earning it?" 

"If you push the matter as far as that," and Mr. Lyon made 
a long pause before finishing his sentence, his deliberateness 
plainly showing that he was not quite ready with an answer ; 
"a complete explanation would take us pretty deep into tech- 
nicalities. In a word, though, your capital earns it." 

"If you won't mind the technicalities, Uncle David," Hes- 
ter insisted, "I should like to make an effort with them. When 
you say 'capital earns it' you seem to me merely to be putting 
the mystery in other words, instead of explaining it. I used 
to discuss this point with Papa by the hour when we read 
political economy together. He was always obliged to end 
by telling me that I would understand these things better 
after I had had more experience with business. The longer 
I think about it the more it seems to me that all the variations 
of ' capital earns it' are really different ways of begging the 
question. Indeed, I must confess that it seems to me to beg 
two questions, and either of them is important enough to put 
the fairness of things in the doubtful class. I don't want you 
to think, Uncle David, that I am so foolish as to imagine 
myself wiser than all the world put together. I simply don't 
understand, and it seems to me that if the world is right it 
ought to be wise enough to make anybody understand who 
really wants to know. I will do my best to follow what you 
say, if you will tell me a little more about each of these ques- 
tions separately. It may be you will see where to begin if I 
acknowledge the whole of my ignorance. In fact I have never 
been able to think of an instance in which capital ever earned 
a cent." 

265 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



Hester's declaration affected Mr. Lyon very much as if she 
had said she had never known the sun to shine or the grass 
to grow. If a man had made the avowal, Mr. Lyon would 
have supposed he was either imbecile or insincere. Neither 
alternative would apply to Hester, and although it seemed 
incredible that she could have remained so juvenile in her 
views on such a subject, while she was in other ways so saga- 
cious, her guardian quite consistently assumed the explana- 
tion that "childish" and "girlish" told the whole story. He 
accordingly inferred that correction of the error was merely 
a matter of directing attention to a few facts that are every- 
day commonplaces for men. 

"I should hardly nominate myself as a tutor," he ven- 
tured, "where your father's teaching ability had failed to 
open your eyes. I shall have to answer your question as a 
plain financial proposition, just as if you asked me for ad- 
vice about starting a business. Suppose we go back before 
the Avery Company was organized. Some men see a chance 
to build up an industry. They think it all over and decide 
how they want to begin. Some one must give his time to work 
out plans. A proper location must be found. Lawyers must 
be engaged to draft a charter that will give the Company the 
rights it needs. Architects and engineers must be selected 
and told what is wanted, and their advice must be studied 
very carefully before it is adopted. Contracts for buildings 
and for machinery must be let. Experts must be employed 
to take charge of different divisions of the work, and they 
must pick out a large body of operatives, many of them 
skilled laborers, others unskilled. Large quantities of raw 
material must be used. A great amount of fuel and other 
supplies must be consumed, and all this before a dollar's 
worth of product can be sold. Now what pays the expenses 
of all these organizers, and their expert assistants, and the 
builders and operatives; and what furnishes all the material 
which at last begins to put on the market something that can 
bring a return for the cost?" 

"That is all very plain," conceded Hester, with a docility 
which gave her guardian the impression that this one case 
from real life had settled the matter. "Capital has to do all 
this. But what I don't see is that capital earns anything by 
its part in the business. Let me suppose that you and Papa 
were the only organizers. You had earned enough money 

2G6 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



before to pay your own expenses while you were plan- 
ning, and to pay the salaries of the different experts, and the 
wages of the workmen, and the cost of all the building and 
equipment and material. Now it seems to me that you and 
Papa and all the other men worked and earned all that was 
made in the plant. Your labor in the first place kept the capi- 
tal from losing its value, by using it, and then your labor 
brought more into existence, but the capital itself was all the 
time powerless except as your labor changed it into things of 
more value." 

Mr. Lyon was not in the habit of drawing precisely such 
distinctions. He had concerned himself very little with eco- 
nomic abstractions beyond the stock phrases of every-day 
business, and he did not foresee the dilemma to which Hes- 
ter's approach was leading. He had no specific objection to 
her way of stating the facts, but he preferred the form with 
which he was more familiar, and he did not see any need of 
giving it up. To guard the rights of the customary view, he 
continued : — "Of course labor is necessary to make the capital 
productive, but on the other hand the labor could not be pro- 
ductive without the capital." 

"If nothing more than that were involved," returned Hes- 
ter, "I could understand it. I know that every one except 
savages gets on by using things that have been saved up, in- 
stead of destroying them. By turning the products of pre- 
vious labor into means of promoting present labor we expand 
our ability to supply our wants. That is all as plain as day. 
But then you add on to that something which is not at all 
plain. It seems to me like the conjuror pulling ribbons and 
rabbits out of the empty hat. You say the capital earns this 
output. That doesn't mean anything to me. Suppose the 
capital which you and Papa had earned were already in the 
different forms which your labor could make useful — a part 
of it in money, part in provisions, part in stone, lumber, steel, 
machinery and so on. Now if that capital were left to itself, 
with no human labor applied to it, not only would no new 
capital be produced by it, but in a very short time some of it 
would begin to lose its own value, and it would not take long 
for quite a portion of it to disappear altogether. That was what 
I meant when I said that I had never found a case of capital 
adding a cent's worth to itself, except as a result of human 
labor." 

267 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



Mr. Lyon had not surmised that Hester was working out a 
deliberate strategical plan. He assumed that her ideas were 
as rudimentary about business matters as they appeared. He 
supposed therefore that he had but to provide for the most pri- 
mary statement of the situation, without anticipating more 
searching inquiry into deeper phases of the facts. He ac- 
cordingly walked straight into Hester's snare. 

"Why certainly, my dear," Mr. Lyon responded encourag- 
ingly, "if it will help you out of your difficulties I am quite 
ready to acknowledge that you are right in a way. If we 
leave out natural increase of plants and animals, which I be- 
lieve the economists put under the head of 'land' or mature,' 
rather than capital, there is no such thing as increase of capi- 
tal in the strict sense except by exertion of human effort. In 
that sense of course all wealth is the reward of human labor." 

Hester gave no sign that she was aware of having scored 
a point. Her method as an ingenue was that of repression. 
In the same tone of eager inquiry she proceeded : — 

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Uncle David, because it 
will help me a good deal about the next point that troubles 
me. Perhaps I shall find that what you really think is not 
so different from my ideas as I supposed. The next thing that 
I am curious about is this. When you and Papa worked with 
your capital in starting the Avery Company, you earned your 
profits as the reward of your labor, just as the other men 
earned their salaries and their wages. It might be put in that 
way, might it not?" 

"Certainly, Hester," assented Mr. Lyon, rather relieved by 
the evidence that his ward was not infected by the delusion 
that the capitalist is not worthy of his hire. 

"So far all is plain then," continued Hester, with tempo- 
rarily concealed consciousness that the colloquy was approach- 
ing a crisis. "But a great blank comes into my mind, Uncle 
David, when I try to understand how my father earned any 
thing any longer, when he retired from the business and be- 
came simply a stockholder." 

The design in Hester's innocence had not yet revealed itself 
to Mr. Lyon. Instead of a long step in logical strategy, the 
question was to him only another exhibit of infantile un- 
steadiness in learning to walk. He had no feeling of the in- 
stability of his premises as he fell back upon the familiar 
formula : — 

268 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



"Why, my child, his capital was still earning for him." 

"But, Uncle David," urged Hester demurely, "I thought 
we agreed just now that human effort does the earning, not 
capital." 

The gathering stringency of the argument was not yet 
fully apparent to Mr. Lyon, but he began to lose patience with 
himself for supposing that even as bright a girl as Hester 
could be an exception to the rule that it is impossible for the 
feminine mind to understand business. He felt, however, 
that his way out of the difficulty must be not by convincing 
her of ignorance, but at least by showing that her ideas were 
out of place in real life. It was too late to retract the un- 
guarded admission to which Hester appealed, so he tried to 
make the best of it by forcing its meaning. 

"Precisely!" insisted Mr. Lyon, without a misgiving that 
he was contradicting himself. "The effort that your father 
exerted in creating that capital goes on working in the capital, 
whether he works with it or not." 

"But suppose every one else in the business stopped work- 
ing at the same time," persisted Hester, "how would Papa's 
effort show itself ? Would his capital continue to increase be- 
cause he created it by work?" 

This inquisitiveness of his ward began to affect Mr. Lyon 
as uncanny. He saw that he must either go over the same 
ground again and arrive at the same point, or turn her 
thoughts in another direction. He was not aware that he was 
unwilling to face ugly realities. He firmly believed that Hes- 
ter was toying with imaginary difficulties, and that he was 
telling her the unvarnished truth. He was inclined to think 
that her interest in such things was unfortunate, but he was 
unwilling to close the conversation without another attempt 
to make the facts as direct and simple as possible. 

"Perhaps it will help you understand the matter," he re- 
sumed, "if you look at it in this way. Your father worked a 
certain number of years, and saved a certain amount out of 
his earnings. Now would it not be a very strange and unjust 
state of affairs, if he could not use those savings in any way 
he pleased? Would not that be equivalent to denying him 
his right to the reward of his labor?" 

"I should think so, of course," assented Hester, again with 
an eagerness which encouraged Mr. Lyon to hope that he had 
found the right clue, "but if I see what you mean, it simply 

269 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



implies the answer that I can't understand to the other ques- 
tion. Let me suppose a sum that is not large enough to con- 
fuse my mind. Suppose Papa had saved a thousand dollars. 
Now it seems to me natural that he should have a choice be- 
tween two ways of enjoying his rights to his earnings. He 
could either spend the money on things that he wanted, or he 
could work with it as capital, and earn more with it. When- 
ever he cared to stop working he would have a right to live 
on what he had saved, or he could keep on working and use 
up all that he earned from year to year, without taking any- 
thing out of his capital. But whenever he preferred to stop 
working entirely, the only right left to him would be the en- 
joyment of his savings. My difficulty is to see how he has any 
right to eat his cake and have it too." 

"But, my dear child,' 7 exclaimed Mr. Lyon, "investing his 
money is one of the ways of getting the benefit of it." 

"My trouble," continued Hester, regardless of her guard- 
ian's apparent opinion that there was no room for further 
doubt, "is that investing the money turns out to be a way of 
getting the benefit of it and a good deal more. It looks to 
me as though investing the money is simply one way of sav- 
ing it, and it would end with that if artificial contrivances had 
not been invented. If Papa wanted to escape working with 
his money for the rest of his life, he had the choice between 
hiding it somewhere and leaving it in the hands of people 
who would work with it and give him security for its return. 
If he had hidden it, he could have drawn from it whenever 
he pleased till it was all gone, but he surely could not have 
used more than he hoarded. When he puts it in the hands of 
workers, he does no more work himself than if he had buried 
the capital in the ground. But the protection which the laws 
give makes the workers really insure the money, so that it is 
safer than it would be if it were buried. Nothing that Papa 
does seems to me to give him a right to enjoy more than the 
bare amount of his earnings in the second case more than in 
the first." < 

In casting about for something to say which would meet 
the needs of such incredible simplicity, Mr. Lyon experienced 
a fleeting gust of sympathy with teachers, if this was a sample 
of the sort of reaction against the obvious which they had to 
correct. He was not intentionally evasive. He meant to deal 
candidly with Hester's difficulties. Her queries had not sug- 

270 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



gested to him the remotest possibility that she might have 
proposed questions which undermined primary assumptions 
of business. Her inability to accept every-day commercial 
propositions seemed to him rather like his own boyish state 
of mind when he scoffed at the multiplication table. He did 
not consciously avoid the issue. He supposed that he w T as 
speaking directly to the question when he took recourse in 
the stock irrelevance — "You do not stop to think, Hester, 
that very few people would invest their money unless they 
could get profits on it." 

The failure of her guardian to meet the questions did not 
surprise Hester. Her father had gone over the ground so 
often that she knew precisely what to expect. She was not so 
much hoping for new light as she was exploring her guardian's 
mind to see if recent events had tended to unsettle any of his 
opinions. She was satisfied that no breach had been made in 
his defenses at the first point of approach, and without the 
slightest confusion about her guardian's failures to reply, and 
without a sign that she knew he was retreating to quite differ- 
ent ground from that which her questions reconnoitred, she 
was not unwilling to test the strength of the second line of de- 
fense. 

"Papa used to insist on that," Hester admitted, "and I have 
no doubt about it, but I do not see how it proves all that it is 
supposed to." 

She was still playing the part of an inquirer, and carefully 
concealing the aggressive aim of her questions. "If you have 
patience enough to hear it, Uncle David, I will explain my 
trouble with your answer. You will think it is foolish, of 
course, but you can't help me unless you know just how things 
seem to me. I can say what I mean best by comparison with 
something else. Suppose I had lost a thousand dollars, would 
anybody who found it have a right to keep it?" 

"Certainly not, without taking proper means to find the 
owner," replied Mr. Lyon, with evident curiosity to learn what 
connection Hester could find between such a case and profits 
on investments. 

"But if I should offer a hundred dollars for returning nine 
hundred," continued Hester, "would the finder have a right 
to accept the reward?" 

"Of course," Mr. Lyon returned emphatically, "and it 
would be good policy to make the offer, because we cannot be 

271 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



sure that people are honest enough to do what is right without 
some advantage to themselves." 

"But suppose you found my money, Uncle David, would 
you have a right to the reward?" 

It was not a doubt about the proprieties of the supposed 
case that caused Mr. Lyon to hesitate. His feelings were per- 
fectly correct and unequivocal in this connection, but he was 
not used to finding words for such scholastic suppositions. 
With the impression that Hester was losing her interest in the 
main subject, he humored what he took to be a new fancy by 
replying, "My right to the reward would be as good as any- 
one's, but of course I could not take it." 

"But," persisted Hester, "is that not unbusinesslike? If 
it is proper for the loser to offer the reward, and for the finder 
to receive it, why should exceptions be made?" 

Mr. Lyon was nearer than he realized to another trap. As 
the subject appeared to him quite disconnected with anything 
else, however, he did not feel the need of qualifying his reply. 
He had never tried to explain such a case before, and it was 
as though he were working out a question in mental arith- 
metic, for his own satisfaction, as he responded : — "A reward 
for returning lost property, apart from trouble and expense 
that it may have cost the finder, is a sort of spur to good-will 
and honesty. Very few people care as much for other peo- 
ple's interests as they do for their own. Many people are not 
honest enough to respect other people's rights unless there is 
some gain in it for themselves. Everybody ought to want 
everybody else to have all that belongs to them, but everybody 
does not feel that way. A reward in such a case helps some 
people to act as though they were honester than they really 
are, and we are better off when we pay the reward than if we 
trusted to honesty alone. But the honester we are, and the 
more we care for one another's interests, the less possible is it 
for us to make gain by helping others to what really belongs 
to them. Between friends, accepting a reward for returning 
lost property would prove that the friendship was counter- 
feit." 

"You have expressed my ideas better than I could, Uncle 
David," Hester commented gratefully. She did not see much 
prospect of making the argument effective upon her guardian, 
but his analysis confirmed her belief that she was on the right 
track, and that she could trust her own reasoning even when 

272 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



it led away from current conclusions. Still she was not en- 
tirely hopeless of making some slight impression with her 
comparison. Meanwhile it would not have added to her con- 
fidence if she could have measured the inertia of Mr. Lyon's 
mind as she proceeded to apply the analogy. 

"Papa always used to rely at last on the same justification 
for profits that you have given, Uncle David, and it seems to 
me that it is good up to a certain limit. The last winter we 
were in Vienna we read Bohm-Bawerk's books together, and 
we had several conversations with the professor himself about 
his theories. My own feeling was that he had shown the ab- 
surdity of all the standard explanations of profits from cap- 
ital, but had offered a substitute as absurd as the rest. But 
your own way of expressing it makes me feel that I have not 
been so very wrong after all in putting two things together, 
and thinking that the reason you give for profits is precisely 
the same reason that you give for rewarding the return of lost 
property. When we cancel the fictitious 'earnings' of capital 
and the actual earnings of capitalists who do necessary work 
with the investment, and deserve their wage like other labor- 
ers, all I can see left that has any force, in the usual theories 
of profits, is the claim that something is needed in the shape 
of a prize, to spur people who couldn't be depended on to do 
right for its own sake to do it for the sake of the reward. This 
answers one of my two questions, but I am very sure you will 
not want to put the same meaning into the answer that I do 
For me, what we have said amounts to this : — The idea that 
capital itself earns anything is a delusive rhetorical expres- 
sion. The earning is all done by the people who do the dif- 
ferent kinds of work with the capital. If people who own 
capital do not need to consume it, and do not want to work 
with it themselves, it is merely good citizenship for them to 
save it in the most useful way, by allowing other people to 
work with it. It seems to me that, without knowing it, they 
are only good citizens for a bonus if they claim pay in the 
form of unearned profits for doing what it is to their own ad- 
vantage as well as other people's that they should do anyway. 
The idea has been growing upon me that the people who 
make this something-for-nothing demand on their fellow cit- 
izens create the social problem. I have been studying reports 
on Papa's estate, and it seems that I am credited each quarter 
with a little more than the quarter before, for doing nothing 

273 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



and allowing other people to increase my capital. I didn't 
mean that I am the only one responsible for the strike, but am 
I so far out of the way in thinking that the root of the trouble 
can be traced to my class of people?" 

So long as the conversation was confined to generalities, 
Mrs. Lyon and Edith had only once or twice noted a fragment 
of the dialogue. At this apparent return to a personal appli- 
cation their interest was once more piqued, and they instinc- 
tively listened for a signal that would show them the affinity 
of their sympathies. 

Edgerly and Logan Lyon had given no sign that they were 
paying attention, but each in his way had made critical notes 
on everything that had been said. Each had observed that, as 
the strike situation had grown more acute, all Mr. Lyon's al- 
lusions to it had become more dogmatic and resolute. Each 
was on the watch for indications whether these symptoms 
meant that the older man's convictions were growing stronger, 
or whether they were merely his way of fighting off possible 
yielding of his convictions under pressure. Each realized too 
that either a support for the old order, or a factor that might 
turn the scale in a new direction, was taking shape in Hes- 
ter's mind. They knew that if she decided to exercise her own 
judgment, she would hold a balance of power which might 
reverse the Avery Company's policy. They could not regard 
the episode as mere talk. It was a critical phase of the pend- 
ing struggle. Without intending to mix in the argument, 
both men exchanged their hammocks for chairs which they 
placed nearer to the zone of inquiry, and the evidence did not 
escape Hester that they had been less indifferent than they 
seemed, but had found something beyond triviality in the 
discussion. 

At the same time it began to dawn upon Mr. Lyon that he 
had on his hands more than an infant-class exercise. Consid- 
ering Hester merely as a girl indulging her curiosity, it made 
very little difference whether or not her ways of thinking 
conformed to those of the street. Viewing her as a power in 
the affairs of his corporation, the sort of advice which she 
accepted became momentous. When Graham had advertised 
the ideas which Hester expressed, Mr. Lyon promptly set 
them down as vicious weapons in the hands of an enemy of 
society. For Hester to coquette with such opinions meant 
dangerous weakness among the friends of society. For the 

274 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



first time Mr. Lyon realized that Hester's wanderings with her 
father, and her samplings of all sorts of social influence, might 
have infected her with ideas which could be turned against 
him in the present struggle. He did not admit the possibility 
that she might have found some more reliable clues to the 
truth than his beliefs contained. It was an invincible convic- 
tion with him that any social theory which called in question 
a fundamental assumption of business was either ignorant or 
criminal. The only judgment he could pass upon an inclina- 
tion to dally with such theories was that it indicated arrested 
or perverted development. While his paternal feeling toward 
Hester could not be changed to harshness by finding her a vic- 
tim of either misfortune, the necessity of rating her state of 
mind as one of the practical factors in the situation threw his 
executive consciousness into circuit and turned this domestic 
incident into a business complication. 

"My dear child," he began, with an unstrained mixture of 
affection and authority, "it never can do any good to play 
with the sort of powder you are handling. The world is what 
it is, and wishing differently won't change it. Fire burns, 
and water drowns, and poison kills, and all the tears we may 
shed for the victims will not have the slightest effect in chang- 
ing the laws of nature. It is the same with the laws of prop- 
erty. You know the Bible says, 'To him that hath shall be 
given and he shall have abundance.' That is the way the 
laws of property work, of course, and it is hard for those who 
have no property to be reconciled to it, but those of us who 
know that brains, not sympathies, make the rules of business, 
have the duty of setting ourselves against every silly scheme 
to substitute sentimentality for the laws of economics. There 
would be chaos in the world if property were not sacred. The 
rights of property put you in possession of the estate your 
father legally created. It is just as foolish to question your 
right to that estate as it would be to doubt your right to be 
born. The position for you to take, Hester, is that you are 
providentially entrusted with large business responsibilities, 
and that it is your duty to accept business principles and carry 
them out to the best of your ability in administering your 
property." 

Outwardly Hester gave no appearance of energetic think- 
ing. No visible change in her bearing corresponded with her 
guardian's sudden intensity. Not even Mr. Lyon, and cer- 

275 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



tainly not the younger men, knew Hester well enough to 
measure the mental and moral force behind the gentleness 
which was both an inheritance and an art. If Mr. Lyon 
could have read her thoughts, the protest which he had just 
uttered would have been a feeble expression of his surprise and 
fear. In fact Hester was appalled at the vision which Mr. 
Lyon's answers gave her of the distance between her view- 
point and his. With the sanguineness of generous youth she 
relied upon a sufficient love of truth for its own sake to open 
the door for it everywhere. Although she had never been 
able to get her father's assent to many of her versions of 
social facts, his rejection of her ideas was a matter so apart 
from practical life that it did not have the effect of Mr. Lyon's 
obduracy in the present crisis. He had furnished ocular proof 
of a certain judicial impotence. Even in the presence of a 
collapse in the workings of his business principles, he could 
not admit the possibility that anything might call for a re- 
consideration of the principles themselves. This evidence 
confirmed Hester's impression that there must be something 
wrong in conventionalities which so jealously resented inspec- 
tion. 

No further demonstration was necessary of her guardian's 
insuperable prejudice ; but Hester feared that she might not 
have another so favorable opportunity to talk with him at 
leisure, and she hoped that at worst his opposition would 
sharpen her conclusions. Ller short experience in the Bureau 
of Charities had put a keen edge upon her zeal to get a more 
definite account of her place in the world ; and Mr. Lyon's as- 
sertion that there could be no appeal from business rules 
struck her as a type of fatalism which was not only arrogant 
but improbable. The one reverse which she had received dur- 
ing the interview was a sense of the hopelessness of modifying 
her guardian's opinions. She realized that he had a concep- 
tion of the world which nothing was likely to alter, and her 
suspicion was approaching certainty that it was a conception 
which pitted itself against the final laws of human progress. 
She had not yet formed the distinct judgment that her guard- 
ian's contention was pathetic. She was merely aware in a 
vague way of a new foreboding that the destiny she was try- 
ing to make out for herself would be doom for him. 

These were but a moment's flash-light impressions, and 
merely the accompaniment of Hester's indecision whether to 

276 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



continue a quest which was bound to be ineffectual. On the 
other hand, the very uselessness of the attempt was a discov- 
ery in itself. It marked one fixed point of departure in her 
life problem. It was a term in the calculation of her proper 
course. She did not pause long enough to indicate that she 
was balancing alternatives. She showed no sign of recogniz- 
ing the reproof and warning in Mr. Lyon's last words. As if 
unconscious of a changed tone in the discussion, she pursued 
the calm course of her inquiry. 

"Before I was quite ready for it, Uncle David, we have gone 
over to my second question. I'm afraid I shall succeed only 
in convincing you that I am incorrigible. But let me go on 
as though the first question had been settled. Suppose we 
have accounted for Papa. I am unable to see how that justifies 
me. Suppose it was true that my father was entitled to his 
profits for life because his labor and his capital earned them. 
But, giving myself the most liberal interpretation I can think 
of, the only work I have ever done was as Papa's companion 
for a few years, after he had spent several times as many years 
as my preceptor. Then it might be said that, for a few 
months, I was his untrained nurse. If I had saved all the 
wages earned in that way at usual rates, the whole would 
amount to much less than my present income every month ; 
while girls of my age who are skilled workers in their trades 
can never earn a fraction of my income. Do you really ex- 
pect me to believe that you justify such a contrast by saying 
that property is sacred? It seems to me that justice is more 
sacred than property. As I understand it, the system of ar- 
rangements which the word property really means is a col- 
lection of attempts to do justice ; but if we find that these ar- 
rangements fail to do justice, then they look to me no longer 
sacred but stupid." 

David Lyon would no more have wronged another in his 
property, knowing his act to be wrong, than he would have as- 
saulted a member of his family. He would as soon have con- 
spired to overthrow the moral law not to lie, or steal or kill, as 
he would have condoned an evasion of justice as he under- 
stood it. But he was honestly at the limit of his intelligence 
when called upon for credentials of his right and wrong. It 
was as though he had been challenged to show cause why up 
is up and down is down. To Mr. Lyon "property," "justice," 
"morality" and the like, were words that stood for the abso- 

277 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



lute and unchangeable nature of things. He was by no means 
.a stranger to the great historians, but whenever he had read 
of past events he had always judged the actors by the rules 
which he would apply to his own conduct. These rules seemed 
to him to require right because it was right, and he knew of 
no more searching reason. He would have denounced it as 
vicious trifling with words, if he had been told that what we 
call right is only opinion, as strong or as weak as the reasons 
upon which it rests. The proposition that right is always an 
adaptation to circumstances, and that any alleged right is 
essentially right in the degree of the fitness of its adaptation, 
would have seemed to him sheer repudiation of morality. He 
knew well enough that the laws of property in different ages 
and countries had varied in detail, but he had never realized 
that more than one basis of property institutions is conceivable, 
nor had he ever comprehended that property is essentially the 
specifications of a bargain under which persons consent to live 
together. He had made no allowance for the fact that many 
of the persons so acquiescing had practically no other alter- 
native ; nor had he considered that the same balancing of in- 
terests which once made the laws of property would be continu- 
ing precisely the same process if it reconstructed those laws 
when the social value of interests had changed. An assertion 
that the institutions of property are liable to modification 
whenever the conviction prevails that the terms are less favor- 
able for some than for other parties concerned, would to his 
mind have meant plain anarchy. 

Mr. Lyon had never distinguished between the abstract 
moral principle that every one is entitled to his own, and the 
particular application of the principle in a given system of 
property. It had never occurred to him, and he could not 
have entertained the idea, that a property system is merely 
an organization of human opinions about what ought to be 
regarded as each one's own. In his view the political device 
was as sacred as the supporting moral principle, because he 
had never harbored a doubt that they were identical. More- 
over, to his way of thinking, rights were inalienable endow- 
ments of individuals. They were features of the divine image 
in which man was created, and as unalterable as the archetype 
itself. Property, as he viewed it, was simply those pre-estab- 
lished rights recognized and guaranteed by law. Property 
was therefore sacred because the rights were sacred ; and it was 

278 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



a sign of something wrong in anyone's make-up who would 
imply that property is impeachable. 

To be sure, Mr. Lyon had been quite consistent with one 
phase of himself in admitting that the institutions of property 
worked anomalies and hardships. He was equally sincere, 
however, in classing these accidents with the other mysterious 
orderings of Providence, and even more rigid in his belief that 
they must be accepted as such. All distresses from lack or 
loss of property seemed to him, like pain, disease, and death, 
inscrutable dispensations. He wished they were not accidents 
of the human lot. Quite in accord with the similar clause in 
Halleck's creed, he was willing to admit that his faith in God 
would be easier if they did not occur; but he was sure it 
amounted to one and the same thing whether we blamed 
property, for its share in them, or Providence. The dilemma 
which Hester had presented affected him, therefore, merely 
as a querulous complaint against the divine government. He 
was too strongly intrenched in his religious beliefs, and in the 
conventional morality which they protected, to be disturbed 
in his confidence that they could not be thrown on the defen- 
sive by collision with facts. He was shocked and grieved that 
Hester could actually make a virtue of impatience with the 
Supreme Wisdom; yet his paternal fondness promptly filed 
the excuse that her experience had been too limited for ef- 
ficient schooling in humility and reverence. 

The two younger men detected rather clearly the remoter 
bearings of Mr. Lyon's perplexity. Edgerly had a hundred 
times analyzed with his classes the general situation of which 
his father-in-law was a symptom. While he listened he had 
found himself dramatizing the dialogue as an encounter of a 
passing and a coming world-spirit. For years he had taught 
that ideas still gripped business practice which more penetrat- 
ing philosophy had dismissed as archaic. He credited in Mr. 
Lyon all that was worthiest in presumptions fairly appropriate 
to a simpler period ; but insistence on them, in spite of chang- 
ing conditions, affected Edgerly as a forlorn hope of barricad- 
ing the sunrise. By contrast, the impulse and the insight of 
Hester's ingenuous reflection of the world as she saw it im- 
pressed him more as confirmation than as consequence of 
the dawning perceptions. 

Logan Lyon's interest had been wholly curious at first. As 
the immediate practical bearing of Hester's questionings pre- 

279 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



sented itself he had tried to think of them in their business re- 
lations, and to give them a rating at their strictly logical value. 
Instead of making for an abstract judgment, however, this 
attempt at a severely judicial hearing had passed rapidly into 
an emotional attitude. Lyon had never served formal notice 
on himself that the girl he had so long treated as a precocious 
infant was already beyond classification as a child. Viewing 
her impersonally, considering her argument as he would a 
contention in court, following her method of thinking, he re- 
corded his first distinct observation that Hester had become a 
woman. Her mind was not merely responding to casual 
stimuli. She was not merely receptive and acquiescent and 
imitative. She was selecting, and correlating, and judging 
and estimating. 

But this impromptu psychological analysis served only as 
a brief introduction to a personal reaction. When he was at 
the point of submitting in rebuttal his ultimatum of unavail- 
ability, Lyon was checked by strange stirrings of feelings 
that with Hester's spirit as an impulse the frontiers of availa- 
bility might be indefinitely advanced. With the suggestion, 
his whole scheme of life seemed to come up for audit. He had 
a moment's view of it against a background of alternatives 
which he had never considered. He wondered whether he was 
affected more by disgust with what was or by desire for what 
might be. He was sure only that his attention had shifted 
from the questions to the questioner. Instead of interposing 
an objection which might have embarrassed Hester, he hoped 
to help her express herself more fully by submitting the 
query: — "As we are all in the same class, Hester, so far as 
drawing dividends beside our salaries, what do you see for us 
to do to make ourselves less troublesome?" 

Hester wished she knew more of Logan on the business side. 
He had always been good fun as a teasing big brother. She 
believed in him heartily up to the point where she began to 
regret him as probably a too faithful copy of his father. As 
Logan had kept his professional equation wholly out of her 
view, she had no evidence that he tended to vary more from 
his father's opinions than from his character. She had no 
reason to suppose that his question was an exception to his 
quizzical habit, and with the faintest parrying smile she still 
directed her appeal to her guardian. 

280 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



"If I am repeating the same thing, Uncle David, it is be- 
cause I am trying to find the plainest words for my idea. Let 
me tell it this way : — A great many kinds of people must work 
together to create a business. Some of them contribute un- 
skilled labor of their hands; some of them skilled labor of 
their hands ; some labor of their brains ; some, like you and 
Papa, not only labor of hand and brain, but special supervis- 
ion and wise judgment, without which all the rest of the work 
might be unsuccessful ; and still other people have helped by 
putting into the hands of these workers some of their wealth 
to be changed into new forms of wealth. Is it not plain truth 
that all these kinds of contribution were necessary to make 
the business? Could it have been created by one kind alone? 
Up to the paying stage, has there not been a necessary part- 
nership of all the makers of the business? But what happens 
after the business is made? Do the persons who have con- 
tributed work only, either of hand or brain, retain their rat- 
ing as partners? Are they not mere hired help? Those who 
are supposed to have contributed wealth, with or without 
work besides, are now the only partners, are they not ? They 
own the business. They are the business. After the hired 
workers have received their pay, and the other costs are cov- 
ered, these contributors of capital claim all the output that is 
left, with all the added value that comes from many sources 
outside the business. If the business turns out to be as pros- 
perous as the Avery Company, every ten years or so, although 
these partners have collected from the business every year a 
high rate of interest, they divide among themselves a surplus 
equal to the whole amount of their previous principal. None 
of the other partners, except these controllers of the preferred 
factor of capital, have any voice or share in this distribution, 
but why should one class of partners in its production be en- 
titled to dispose of it and not all the others?" 

This time Logan Lyon deliberately rode for a fall. He 
was sure he could provoke a reply that would bring out Hes- 
ter's version more distinctly. In his most serious manner he 
protested: — "But, Hester, haven't all these other people had 
their pay at market rates?" 

"Yes, Logan," Hester sighed, and the hardly perceptible 
depression of light in her face told him that she could find 
less palliation for his tardiness than for her father's, "let us 
hope that they had, always including the money-lenders. For 

281 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



that very reason, if full market rates of pay to all concerned 
have still left a surplus undivided, why should it belong to 
one group of its producers rather than to all?" 

Hester had scarcely glanced at Logan in replying to his 
question, and was still apparently consulting only his father. 

"But there are some more questions, Uncle David. If we 
had come from another planet, which had only the laws of the 
physical universe in common with ours, is it not possible that 
we might be astonished at this arrangement? Might we not 
say that it was largely a clumsy make-shift, and that it cor- 
responded only in the roughest way with the elements of jus- 
tice involved in the case? Might we not decide at once that 
this treatment of great numbers of the makers of the business 
as not-partners, and the reservation of partnership rights for 
a favored section of the makers, was arbitrary? Might we 
not prophesy that, whatever may have been the causes that 
led to such unfair arrangements, they could never perma- 
nently satisfy rational beings, and that removal of the in- 
justices would begin as soon as people reached a high grade 
of intelligence? It may be I have lived as far from your busi- 
ness world as though I had been on another planet. Any- 
way, the appearance it presents in the glimpses I am getting 
is chiefly amateurish." 

By this time Mr. Lyon had dismissed the thought of cor- 
recting these vagaries at once. He was so convinced of his 
helplessness that he had given up the attempt to instruct, and 
was merely following anxious curiosity to draw out any un- 
spoken reserve in Hester's ideas. "Most business men are on 
the lookout for ways to improve their methods/' he protested 
with an effort at humor, "and would be willing to pay liberal 
royalties to anyone who could show them how to become less 
amateurish." 

"One of our modern engineers would call the pyramid- 
builders amateurish, would he not, Uncle David," and because 
she well knew how her confession had hurt her guardian 
Hester tried to speak soothingly; "although he might not be 
able to tell how the knowledge and tools at their disposal 
could have been used more skillfully? As a stranger from 
another world, I must respect the skill applied in your eco- 
nomic system, yet I must be frank enough to say that it seems 
to me an impossibly boorish system." 

282 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



"Do not spare the particulars, Hester," sadly exhorted Mr. 
Lyon. 

"Why," continued Hester, "I should suppose that things 
are worth what they are worth in serving people. As I un- 
derstand your economic system, it makes people altogether 
subordinate to capital. Does not such an inversion of values 
make the system essentially savage and superstitious?" 

Hester did not at the moment remember that she had used 
one of Graham's phrases. She had consciously enough, and 
often, thought over his arguments, but her concurrence with 
them had been endorsement rather than absorption. She 
was really trying to find a view-point of her own, and her 
method would have been telling evidence against the imita- 
tion theory in social psychology. Her sense of loneliness in 
this search had grown more oppressive with every gain in 
clearness of vision. She had not yet made out that not Gra- 
ham alone, but Halleck and Edgerly and even Logan Lyon 
were moving from different starting points toward the same 
outlook ; and her very devotion to the individual problem, to- 
gether with her feeling of solitude in the pursuit, retarded 
her perception that Mr. Lyon represented a declining phase 
of the world-order, and that her forereaching was merely one 
among innumerable signs of the latest human awakening. 

"If what you call 'an inversion of values' could really be 
brought home to it, I should have to accept the impeachment," 
Mr. Lyon provisionally admitted. 

"But can what we have agreed to about the facts of the 
system have any other meaning than an inversion of values?" 
pleaded Hester. "If we frankly invent fairy stories, the more 
fanciful they are the better, because they set out to be a com- 
plete vacation from hard realities. But I have always resented 
such mixtures of fact and fable, of gods and men, as Homer's 
description of the siege of Troy, for instance. It affects me 
as tantalizing sane reason to credit men with heroic exploits 
and then, just as their deeds are about to achieve their natural 
ends, to interpose actors who are independent of rational cause 
and effect, and make them defeat the results. But I can see no 
more superstition in mixing up mythical gods with a Greek 
tribal conflict than in your making a person out of capital 
and allowing it to nullify the rational relations between 
laborers." 

283 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



"Your Greek is surely Greek to me, Hester;" and Mr. 
Lyon's inability to see any pertinence in the parallel was not 
feigned. "I can think of nothing that calls for such a com- 
parison." 

"Have patience with me just a moment longer, Uncle 
David," — Hester was not happy in wounding her guardian, 
but she was obeying a strengthening sense of obligation to be 
genuine toward the problems she was facing, — "and I will say 
it in only one more way. It seems to me as plain as the lawn 
and trees and lake before our eyes that we should make the 
world better if we were willing to accept the consequences of 
some very simple facts. Is it not clear that life is just people 
learning how to live together so as to help out one another 
most in turning nature to their uses? Are not people and 
nature the only real factors in the problem? When we have 
worked together long enough to have government and laws 
and beliefs and business, are any new factors really con- 
cerned? Is it not an illusion if we imagine that these varia- 
tions are anything more than combinations of the work of 
nature and of people? Can any business possibly be an ex- 
ception to this rule? Is not a business merely means that 
nature affords, fitted by some people's work to furnish their 
share of the exchanges by which all the people in the world 
satisfy their wants? Is there any sanction in unspoiled rea- 
son for excluding from a business some of the persons who 
have created it, and giving their places to this upstart ficti- 
tious person, Capital? Have not the people who put their 
lives into the business made themselves more a part of it than 
those who merely put in their money ? Can a system built on 
the contrary assumption be anything but an accumulation of 
accidents? Is it not a complete inversion of values, a jugglery 
of greedy force, a conspiracy to consecrate wrong, if we try 
to perpetuate this structure of fictions in the place of nature?" 

Mr. Lyon was entirely free from misgivings in classing 
Hester's ideals as a somewhat more advanced variation of cry- 
ing for the moon. Upon that supposition he was wise in pre- 
suming that experience would be the best teacher, and he 
restricted himself to the incredulous prediction, "As you grow 
older, Hester, you will probably learn that there are difficul- 
ties in the way of putting our preferences in the place of the 
plan the world was built on." 

284 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE NOVICE 



Hester refrained from reminding her guardian that he was 
again begging the question, but she saw more plainly than 
ever that the clue to the difference between them was his ina- 
bility to conceive that anything remained to be discovered 
about the world's workings. She offered larger bonds than 
she was aware for the lawfulness of her thinking, when she 
further confessed: — 

"I acknowledge I have no idea how far it is pos- 
sible to go at once toward changing capitalistic business into 
human business. Perhaps it may require an era merely to 
install the belief that this is the next great problem. It may 
be that evangelizing the world with such a gospel would be 
salvation enough for one epoch. I'm afraid I shall not be a 
patient waiter for the fruits of this righteousness till all the 
world has received its seeds. Such a religion ought to begin 
early to be justified by its works as it goes along. At all 
events, if I understand Mr. Graham, he is simply a prophet 
of this faith. He is not an enemy of business. He wants 
business to make itself more human by repudiating an irra- 
tional principle. He insists that every worker in every busi- 
ness shall be recognized as a partner in the business, with his 
proportionate share of property in the business and influence 
upon its policy. He does not profess to know how the pro- 
portions of property and influence will be worked out. He 
claims only that the next move toward fixing these propor- 
tions must be admission of the neglected principle. So much 
at least he demands now in the name of justice, and all the 
facts that I can see tell me he is right." 

For several minutes Edith Edgerly had been standing be- 
hind her father, her hands resting caressingly on his shoul- 
ders, and as it seemed to her husband, instinctively guarding 
Mr. Lyon against something impending. Edith was nearer 
than Mrs. Lyon to thinking and feeling as Hester did; but 
quicker sense of the crushing meaning which submission to 
such valuations would have for one man, than of the advance 
it would mark for other men, spurred wife and daughter 
alike to silent resentment. While absorbed in her inquest, 
Hester had not failed to regret the tension in their family 
circle, yet she did not doubt that it was unavoidable. It 
seemed merely a reduced reflection of the business conflict. 
She saw no hope that the one could disappear without the 
other ; but she was in doubt whether her skirmishing had more 

285 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE NOVICE 



advanced or retarded the adjustment of either situation ; and 
no one in the group felt more relief in following Logan's 
timely call for a sail in the launch before sunset. 



286 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE PRICE OF PROGRESS 



THE PRICE OF PROGRESS 



XVII 
THE PRICE OF PROGRESS 

"We should have no saving of life by means of the operating 
room if some one hadn't the nerve to cause suffering for 
the sake of relieving it." 

MRS. LYON alone remained at The Lodge. The rest of 
the party took the early Monday morning train for the 
city, with the understanding that if the weather held good all 
would return for one more Sunday at the Lake. Mr. Lyon 
planned to take his meals at the Club and to sleep at Logan's 
apartments. Hester was visiting Elsie. The schedule for the 
week was rather crowded, but nothing was in sight to show 
that the season's conflict was nearing a decision. 

The Edgerlys consorted with a University coterie who 
called themselves The Riffraff. They had been drawn to- 
gether by miscellaneous attractions. Before they were fully 
aware of their affinities, Fessenden of the economic depart- 
ment observed that they were what the sociologists would call 
a group; and he explained that the reason why sociologists 
existed was that there were a few things left not worth any- 
one's else attention. The members of the bunch scorned to 
inquire whether the joke was on the sociologists or them- 
selves; but from that hour they began to have a group-con- 
sciousness, which they afterwards learned was also sociolog- 
ical. Without deliberation for or against, and without sur- 
veying themselves in the abstract, as we are viewing them, 
they spontaneously assumed the function of academic safety- 
valve. They admitted that they were a providential pro- 
vision against the pressure of too protracted and pervasive 
profundity. Their operations were not reduced to rule. They 
mostly happened. When human nature could endure no 
longer, they fell back on reversion to type. Their only plan 
was to have no plan, but to vary their recuperations according 
to a general law of non-conformity. They descended upon 
one another's abodes in designedly irregular rotation. Usu- 
ally by themselves, but occasionally for the redemption of a 
wider University constituency, they behaved like naughty 
boys getting even with parole-officialing academic dignity. 

291 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE PRICE OF PROGRESS 



The old guard of the group numbered exactly twenty. As 
many more had been recruited from time to time. They 
were the men and women of the academic community who 
had the most compatible and infectious gifts of laughter or 
its proxies, and the temper to make them restorative and 
tonic. They were no close corporation. Their boundaries 
were adjustable. Within the circle indeed were two or three 
pairs of feudists who departmentally were always at each 
other's throats, but in the group atmosphere professional ani- 
mosities were as evanescent as professors' salaries. The Riff- 
raff merged with everything non-vocational about the Uni- 
versity, and once or twice a year it managed to fuse the whole 
faculty body for an hour or two into a mass of homogeneous 
good-fellowship. 

This time the call had read : — 

The Kiffraff collects with the Edgerlys Monday evening. 
Committee of the whole to consider the state of the Universe. 

Mrs. Edgerly had asked Hester and Elsie. They came for 
dinner too ; and the table talk was largely biographic of the 
more salient personalities to be expected. 

It was not like the usual rallies of The Riffraff. The com- 
bined effort to relax placed no net result to its credit beyond 
general disclosure of unreconciled temper toward social con- 
ditions. Vacation was just over, it is true, and "the strain of 
toil, the stress of care" had not yet told to the reacting point. 

The real reason, however, was subtler. Along with the 
smoke and the Stock Yards' aroma, the strike streaked the 
University atmosphere. And it was not with the surface 
effect of dust that a tuft of feathers whisks from its lodgment. 
It was the drain of virus in the blood. The Edgerlys were 
the only University family with a negotiable interest in the 
labor issue, but it would have been hard to find a member of 
the faculties who was not brooding over the situation as 
though it were his immediate individual affair. Few of them 
had definite and organized opinions that would go far as a 
basis of settlement. They had rather desultory and disquiet- 
ing feelings, fine scruples that this, that and the other aspect 
of the case on either side ought not so to be, compunctions 
that the morals on trial were vulgarly under grade, but withal 
a curiously concerted certainty of dogmatic imprecision that 
somebody ought to do something. 

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David Lyon's vocabulary would not have enabled him to 
characterize this state of mind as a coincidence of neuras- 
thenic parallels. If he had known where to borrow the terms, 
and had been advised of the occasion for their use, he woulcl 
doubtless have employed them promptly. He would thus 
have satisfied his conscience without unparliamentary divulg- 
ings. In spirit, too, he would have represented most of his 
directors, but they would have troubled themselves less about 
non-conducting language. 

Yet the diagnosis would have quite misconstrued the sig- 
nificance of this academic sentiment. Only a small fraction 
of the University community had given more than layman's 
attention to labor problems, from the standpoint either of the 
business man or of the social theorists; yet almost without 
exception the faculty men reacted to social conflicts as 
promptly as temperature to the sundown. Without an articu- 
late account of it, they were accepting themselves as parts of 
a social conscience in the making. As a result of influences 
which they could not have scheduled, they were forming the 
habit of looking at themselves as among the responsible par- 
ties behind all the good or evil of society. Though they had 
no ready cures for moral ills, they were fast shedding the 
shame of secretiveness about the ills' existence. Their in- 
stinct was becoming declarative that a breakdown anywhere 
in the social process was not wholly, nor perhaps mostly, a re- 
fusal of individuals to keep faith with the social order; but 
more a probable case against the intelligence of the ways in 
which society was trying to work. For David Lyon's kind 
to despise the symptomatic value of such people, was as fatu- 
ous as it would be to deny their competence to ring in an 
alarm, because they didn't belong to the fire department. 

When an individual has gone wrong there may be some 
hope of bringing him back by ridicule. When it is a whole 
industrial system, ridicule has the effect of much ado about 
nothing, till particular persons can be haled before the bar 
of public opinion, charged with specific and recognized trans- 
gressions. 

The fly in the ointment of The Riffraff was invisible to the 
naked eye, and this was the prime unsettling of their spirits. 
That the economic process in Chicago was nearing halt on a 
dead center, was plain enough. That civilized industries were 
not beyond liability to such arrest, was sad enough. But the 

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worry to the dispassionate observer was that no distinguish- 
able individuals were in sight to whom it could fairly be said, 
"Thou art the man!" No corporation in the country had a 
more spotless reputation than the Avery Company. Its 
officers and largest stockholders were among the people of 
whom Chicago was proudest. On the other hand, the more 
the strike leaders pressed their case, the stronger the set of 
public opinion toward Halleck's early conclusions. 

University sentiment was more sensitive than that of the 
general public to both sides of the dilemma. There was a 
stealthy feeling that a social deadlock was somehow a contra- 
diction in the logic of life. There was half-conscious confes- 
sion of humiliation and guilt at inability to speak the word 
that might expose the flaw in the reasoning and start up action 
along its rational course. 

This sense of incompetence gave the pitch for the evening. 

Seymour, one of the biologists, was the first to arrive, and 
he brought Graham as his guest. He would not have gone so 
far without an accomplice. It was Hester's work; and her 
private reasons went back to Graham the individual, not the 
Institution. She had urged Seymour to come early, promis- 
ing to be answerable for the consequences. Seymour and 
Graham had roomed in the same hall for three years at Har- 
vard. Between the alternatives of conflict and complement 
open to such opposites they had accomplished a durable nat- 
ural selection of the latter. Hester's suggestion to Seymour, 
who was a long-time friend, had been that Logan Lyon would 
be invited by his sister; and that a meeting, under such cir- 
cumstances, might do something indirectly toward settling 
the strike. If the argument was ingenuous in its substance, 
it was slightly overdrawn in its sanguineness, and besides that 
it was surreptitiously advanced several numbers in the rating. 
In this particular connection, the strike was in fact quite inci- 
dental to Hester's more personal purposes. 

Halleck, whom Edgerly had invited, was the only other 
guest. When Seymour presented his friend to Edgerly, and 
later to Lyon, it was "Graham of Harvard," "Edgerly of 
Yale," "Lyon of Princeton." Beyond this it sufficed that they 
were gentlemen. After Hester felt that Graham had settled 
his dues to his hosts, she manceuvered a topic which included 
the Edgerlys and Seymour, but offered no inducements to 
Graham. 

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The elision occurred according to a law not mentioned by 
Grimm; and furthermore the phonetic change was appar- 
ently unobserved when Graham detached Elsie from the dis- 
course, and formed a diphthong which at once showed capa- 
bilities of sustaining itself without adventitious support. 

Hester's back was turned, but she needed no assurance that 
details were immaterial. With an introspective withdrawal 
not betrayed to the rest of the circle, she indulged a momen- 
tary reflection that things were not so insuperably intractable 
after all. In any event, her self-imposed function of media- 
tion had been discharged without announcing itself, and the 
inward reward was prodigally disproportioned to the visible 
merit. 

"I wonder, Miss Kissinger," Graham ventured, "if an out- 
lawed Institution still rouses enough curiosity to bring a neg- 
ligible individual within the range of vision." 

"The Institution has been behaving so atrociously of late," 
Elsie reservedly replied, "that the individual may perhaps 
elicit a degree of morbid interest from the thoughtless and 
injudicious." 

"Then the individual must be in for a lonesome time of it 
this evening," sighed Graham, "unless there are non-apparent 
resources for diluting the social medium." 

They had taken a few steps toward the library door, and 
the Colonial fire-place which occupied one end of the room at 
once struck Graham as a strategic position. Without allow- 
ing space for an answer, he continued: — "One of those chim- 
ney corners might possibly take us back to the Boston level 
at which we parted company." 

"I haven't decided yet," skidded Elsie, while they moved 
slowly in the proposed direction, "whether the Boston that I 
found had risen above or fallen below the chimney corner 
level." 

"At this moment," Graham deposed complaisantly, as they 
occupied one of the settles, "there is no room in my mind for 
doubt that, compared with a particular chimney corner, Bos- 
ton, past, present or future, is a sub-basement." 

Elsie was neither prepared for a metamorphosis of Graham 
into the ordinary society jollier, nor was she so inexperienced 
as to attach more than a surface meaning to such speeches, 
even from the most matter-of-fact men. On the whole the re- 
mark affected her as probably a made-over from the student 

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repertoire, and it was distinctly disappointing. Graham in 
earnest was impressive. She feared for the staying powers of 
the interest if he began to exhibit the marks of a trier-out of 
debutantes. 

Graham's next lead was hardly more fortunate : — 

"The facts might easily be distorted into the charge that I 
had been shadowing you and Miss Kinzie." 

"And the undistorted facts are?" queried Elsie. 

"My program takes me often into your charity district, 
and I have several times had to execute some quick right- 
abouts to keep outside your lines." 

"I see," Elsie interpreted, "the Brahmin avoids the Sudra's 
shadow." 

"On the contrary," amended Graham, "the unsanctified 
respects the sanctuary. If the sort of thing you are doing 
weren't so futile, it would be holy." 

Elsie was not sure whether Graham's real emphasis was on 
the depreciation or the praise, but she left the move with him 
by the inquisitive protest: — "Then you imagine one's con- 
science may be so easy with its secret of futility that one needs 
to be taunted with it?" 

Graham was both pleased, and at the same time, in the 
classic English of his self-examination, "stung." He was 
happily surprised by Elsie's insight, but she made what he 
intended as sincere, if qualified, appreciation look like brutal- 
ity. Yet her implied anticipation of the thought in his mind 
was a sign that she had looked farther into the situation than 
he had expected. He was disgusted with himself for his awk- 
ward beginning, but his very blunders helped him the sooner 
to find firm footing for frankness. He was more like Elsie's 
previous estimate of him when he further explained, instead 
of retracting : — 

"If you look at it in that way, Miss Kissinger, whether it 
is holy or not, it is heroic. I have come across plenty of traces 
lately of you and Miss Kinzie doing things fit to earn you 
sainthood, and I meant to applaud them heartily. I wish 
you would tell me though just what led from my way of put- 
ting it to your phrase 'secret of futility.' " 

"Confessing for myself costs nothing," Elsie answered de- 
liberately, "but I can speak for no one else. You mustn't 
infer from me anything about Miss Kinzie. How far we 
think alike or differently, I have no right to say. I don't 

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mind telling you, though, that I have kept on doing friendly 
visiting with the feeling of carrying a mangled child to the 
hospital after I had been riding in the machine that ran him 
down. There would be some virtue, I suppose, in making all 
the amends in my power, but there would have been so much 
more in preventing the reckless driving." 

"Have you ever carried that idea over to the credit of the 
Institution, Miss Kissinger?" suggested Graham searchingly. 

"Why ! Mr. Graham," and Elsie was instantly almost bel- 
ligerent; "at this moment the Institution is the only reckless 
driver ! Isn't it just as bad for the boy, whether he is run over 
by the freight truck or the fire engine?" 

"But," pleaded Graham, "you might have pardoned the 
engine driver for running over one child, if he had saved the 
Iroquois hundreds?" 

They stopped a moment to take bearings. Each picture 
seemed plausible, but neither was satisfying. After adjust- 
ing her reflections as well as she could, Elsie showed that she 
was puzzled more than defiant, when she speculated, "Isn't 
the answer that no driver can be sure of saving the hundreds, 
but he may take care of the one?" 

"If you will pardon me, Miss Kissinger," Graham resisted, 
"I think that is just the feminine of it. It is emotionally fine 
to help the near individual, but it is rationally weak to mag- 
nify him over the remoter many." 

"Of course," yielded Elsie, with scoffing humility, "it is my 
duty to believe that the masculine of it is the right of it, but 
sooth to say I have never been so persuaded. The hypothet- 
ical many in the distance may be worth more than the actual 
one present, but reason seems to me stronger if it makes sure 
of the real one, and deals with the unreal many when they 
materialize. Preachments and programs about humanity may 
have their place, but the need of the Higgins family next 
block is a neighborly hand. It seems to me that real human- 
ity must mean joining one neighborly hand to another till 
all the world is in touch. I can't understand the arithmetic 
that expects to sum up the whole by leaving out the parts." 

"And you lay that at the door of the Institution?" 
wondered Graham. 

"Why shouldn't I, Mr. Graham? When you explained 
your campaign in Boston, it sounded almost convincing. But 
I come back to the Avery district and everything seems to 

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THE PRICE OF PROGRESS 



contradict your theory. A year ago the region was full of peo- 
ple who were getting on in the world with tolerable satisfac- 
tion. They were working hard, but instead of finding fault 
with that, most of them would have given up all the hopes 
they had ever pinned to luck, or politics, or fine sounding 
theories or anything else, for the assurance of a chance to do 
that same kind of work to the end of their days. Those of 
them who were careful had saved something from their earn- 
ings. They were adding comforts to their homes. They 
were starting their children better than they started them- 
selves. They didn't live in Paradise. They had heard of 
spots on the sun, and they knew of exasperating things about 
government, and even about their own industry. In propor- 
tion to the substantial welfare of their lot, however, the eco- 
nomic and political evils were hardly more prominent in their 
calculation than the sun spots. Now comes the strike, and in 
place of that prosperous and comfortable and decently con- 
tented population, all are unhappy, hundreds are miserable, 
and scores are desperate. What is the change for? To elevate 
'Labor!' Where is this 'Labor,' and what is it? You would 
say it is all-the-laborers, and they can be benefited only at 
the cost of some-of-the-laborers. What the employers fall 
back on sounds a little more impersonal, but it really comes 
to the same thing. They say everything must yield to the 
interests of Capital. In either case it's imaginary people pre- 
ferred to real people. Both the strikers and the corporation 
have a theory of the greatest good of the greatest number, but 
in practice the only ones you can be sure of don't count in the 
least. Between your upper and nether millstones of Capital 
and Labor you grind the life out of the actual, near, flesh and 
blood man who is most worth considering. He bears the 
brunt, whether of work or fight ; but whatever happens to him 
Capital and Labor manage between them to keep work or 
fight going on in the interest of the absentees, who in either 
case are in no danger." 

It was not easy for Graham to deflect the force of this ar- 
raignment, especially as his own thoughts had been running 
in the same direction. In sheer fighting strength the organi- 
zation had gained with every week of the strike. But the tolls 
of war had to be paid, and experience at the place of collec- 
tion tended to make the price look larger than its purchase. 
In principle Graham had never faltered for a moment, nor 

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as far as he knew had any of his supporters. For substantially 
the same reasons that Elsie had expressed, however, he had 
lately been turning over in his mind the possibility of terms 
with the Avery Company that would leave the skirmish line 
a visible distance in advance of its original position, and would 
relieve the first combatants by transferring the thick of the 
fight to another part of the field. Simply because he had not 
been able to hit upon a feasible proposition, he was obliged 
to decide that the time had not come for altering the plan 
of campaign. 

Graham had hardly more heart than hope for an effort 
to acclimate Elsie's sympathies to such a north temperate at- 
mosphere. He was not comfortable under her criticism; 
still there was refreshment in the contrast between her warmth 
toward people in particular and the necessary chill of a war 
policy that had to treat humanity as an abstraction. Nor 
upon second thought was he inordinately proud of his gen- 
eralization that a presumption in favor of actual people, as 
against contingent prospects, was peculiarly feministic. On 
the contrary, he remembered that precisely this preference was 
the first principle of practical business. He saw that an apol- 
ogy was due to Elsie, and that he must accept the burden of 
proof that her bird in the hand was not worth his two in the 
bush. His confidence in his own judgment was not waver- 
ing, but he was almost as uncertain of his wish as of his ability 
to change Elsie's view. His usual decisiveness was well in the 
background as he took up his defense. 

"You wouldn't admit, Miss Kissinger, that you are appeal- 
ing to the philosophy of 'let well enough alone?' " 

Elsie was unhappily neither as sure as Graham of her out- 
come, nor was she as reliant upon her own reasoning. She 
was in contact with a mass of saddening facts, and she con- 
nected them correctly with their immediate occasions. Be- 
yond this she was in the same fog with older and wiser peo- 
ple. If there was a difference, it was that few of the older 
and wiser gave themselves as much uneasiness about a fog- 
dispeller. Graham's insinuation touched a specially tender 
spot, and he charged up another gaucherie to himself when 
Elsie answered: — "Is that degree of harshness necessary, Mr. 
Graham ? One might suppose it would count as a mitigating 
circumstance that I said first aid to the injured is futile com- 
pared with shutting off the supply of injuries?" 

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Graham could have choked himself for his tactlessness. It 
was a new experience to miscue in this stupid fashion. He 
felt as though he had suddenly found out that one of his 
senses had stopped working. He thought it must have been 
his campaign habits. A season of sharpshooting at the worst 
and the weakest in opposing opinions must have reorganized 
him for offense only. 

At the same time Elsie was trying to restrain herself from 
too fickle parting with her illusion that Graham was tolerant 
and magnanimous. His uneasiness was so obtrusive, how- 
ever, that she could understand it only as a taking of liberty 
to be angry at her disagreement. 

With a doughty effort to put himself right, Graham threw 
over his misplaced confidence in abstract reasoning, and reck- 
lessly followed his impulse. It was a lucky stumble into rein- 
statement in Elsie's sympathy. 

"I don't know why I'm floundering so, Miss Kissinger," 
he blurted out boyishly, "but it's probably what's coming to 
me for dragging the day's work in at all. My instincts claim 
you as an ally. It was farthest from my intention to worry 
you into professing my opinions. I have been wrestling all 
Summer with friends and enemies who had at least the one 
purpose in common of beating the dust out of one another's 
arguments. Those of us who were fighting shoulder to shoul- 
der against the Company have fought one another as hard, 
not to defeat one another but to chase everything out of our 
calculations that can't justify itself. It's a terrific test, but 
in the end it's a mutual benefit. There is nothing like it to 
prick bubbles and put us face to face both with ourselves and 
the cold facts. I had no business to go at you as though I 
wanted to schoolmaster you into reciting my lessons, and it is 
more of a surprise to me than to you that I did it. As I think 
it over now, our organization has been furnishing a pretty 
good illustration of George Eliot's remark that kicking and 
cuffing are common folks' wooing. We have improved our 
mutual understanding and kept up our courage by merciless 
belaborings of one another. Ever since our Boston talks I've 
counted you on our side in spirit. It was boorish confiding- 
ness not to guard you against our sort of attack, but it was that 
at worst. To tell the truth, the hardest struggle I've had has 
been with my own misgivings in the very line you have sug- 
gested. I hope I'm open to conviction, if I'm wrong, but I 

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have nearly sweat blood deciding that it wouldn't be justice in 
the long run to the people who are sacrificing most, if we 
should let up before we had clinched something in their favor. 
I was hungry for a crumb of confirmation from you. Possi- 
bly my conscience was guilty and came to you for indulgence. 
I don't like to think so, though. If I can tell the truth about 
myself, I was just instinctively hoping you had checked up 
the items in the bill of expense that you had direct knowledge 
of, and had still found a balance to the credit of the strike. 
It would be no wonder if you hadn't, but it would have stead- 
ied me with a whole lot of comfort if you had." 

How remorseful Graham's confidence had made her feel, 
Elsie would hardly have cared to admit, but her relenting was 
unconcealed. She was quite aware that her vanity might 
have been drugged by Graham's association of her with his 
cabinet counsellors ; but whether the flattery was artful or art- 
less, it was conciliating. The constraint between them was 
gone, and Elsie rather eagerly seized the chance to prove up 
her impressions with Graham's assistance. 

"If it will help any," she responded, "to acknowledge that 
it was the feminine of it to mix my feelings with matters of 
opinion, I hereby accept my sackcloth and ashes. If you will 
forget that foolishness, I will further confess that I ought to 
have racked my soul a good deal more, before I pretended to 
be sure I had weighed everything in the case. I am not sure, 
and I know it, and I was really experimenting with your own 
plan of saying the worst to see what it was worth. Perhaps 
it would be nearer the truth if I should say that, in spite of 
my belief that your argument for the strike is strong, if it de- 
pended on me, after all the consequences of the strike that 
I have seen in these few weeks, I wouldn't have the courage 
to say it should continue." 

"It may be, Miss Kissinger," Graham returned with an ab- 
stracted manner which Elsie had not seen in him before, 
"that if it depended on you it would require still more courage 
to say it should not continue. I'm afraid of lapse into the con- 
troversial again, and so I merely ask how you could stop with 
your demand for removal of causes, and not take the next 
step of recognizing that the whole aim of the strike is to re- 
move causes." 

"But if the strike, so far as you can see, multiplies evils in- 
stead of preventing them?" pleaded Elsie. 

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X 



THE PRICE OF PROGRESS 



"Then," submitted Graham, "is there nothing in the anal- 
ogy that the most scientific doctor or surgeon often has to make 
the patient worse before he can make him better? We should 
have no saving of life by means of the operating room if some 
one hadn't the nerve to cause suffering for the sake of reliev- 
ing it. Let us go back to one item in the state of things as you 
described it before the strike. The people would have jumped 
at an offer to underwrite their jobs for life. Without reckon- 
ing any other evil in their lot, isn't it an intolerable situation 
that, instead of having their jobs safe for life, either Capital 
or Labor may any minute step in and put them out of their 
jobs? Isn't it worth something to them to change that condi- 
tion? Can't they afford to sacrifice and suffer a little while 
to win security for life?" 

"In the abstract that is easy to suppose," confirmed Elsie, 
"but the awful practical problem is to find the line between 
profitable sacrifice for future good, and profitless prolonging 
of treatment that only aggravates the disease. In our own 
case, isn't it time to consider anything possible that might get 
our people a little fraction of what they have fought for, and 
then let some other silent partners on the labor side take their 
turn in distress?" 

The piano had been the base of operations for the larger 
group, while only a meagre overflow of the non-musical had 
trickled into the library. The whole company was now tak- 
ing possession of its more familiar forum. 



3 2 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SOCIOLOGIST 



THE SOCIOLOGIST 



XVIII 

THE SOCIOLOGIST 

"The upshot was that all the folks who stopped to talk the 
matter over between innings agreed that live-and-help- 
live ought to be the game, and that every body would get 
more out of it in the end, after it was fairly learned, than 
they were getting out of the live-and-let-live game." 



THE ordinary symposium of The Riffraff was modelled 
after a fox hunt. Anyone who ventured to express an 
opinion was fair game for the rest. This time the talk had 
taken an introspective turn that was getting on everybody's 
nerves. It had become a rather abstract and caustic debate 
on society in general, and the part that academic people might 
and mostly do not play in solving social problems. A pessimis- 
tic shadow was settling over the group when Vance, one of the 
mathematicians, pointed in a new direction. 

"No doubt there is a good deal of subsidiary fumigation of 
the universe," he conceded, "in thus rouging over our own 
blushes. It seems to have been an artistic piece of work. But 
the terms of the call led me to expect incidental attention to 
the fact that we are not the whole thing. We are the belle of 
the ball of course, and the main interest flutters around our 
make-up; but at this stage of the preparations wouldn't it 
tend to insure the success of the function if we heard from 
the committee of arrangements what is known about the fig- 
ures and favors?" 

The allusion would have meant nothing to a stranger, and 
its point was not seen by the company till Vance had f ocussed 
attention on Randall, who had thus far been a silent super- 
numerary in the library scene. It took but a moment for 
Vance's hint to do its work. The pack had slipped its leash 
and was in full cry driving Randall into the open. 

Randall was one of the sociologists. His personal equation 
was an indulgently cynical front toward the besetting weak- 
nesses of his immediate environment, with a concealed storage 
battery of day and night doggedness to make his prospect pan 
out. The sententious smile which was a part of his undress 

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THE SOCIOLOGIST 



uniform, was a modus vivendi between wearied resignation 
and amused curiosity. That the foolish were requiring of 
sociology a sign, and that the wise were persuading themselves 
it was foolishness, served Randall as an exhaustless source of 
quickening inspiration. It was wholly reassuring, he held, 
that the sociologist was a prophet without honor. If the big 
world listened, it would be* something new in mortal grop- 
ings toward the light ; and it would rouse fears in the knowing 
that after all they were voicing the past instead of the future. 
It did not feaze Randall that his colleagues generally classed 
sociology with phrenology and palmistry. He was old enough 
to remember when biology was in the same doldrums, and he 
had started his own professional career as the first incumbent 
of a chair of history and economics, created in a New England 
college against the protest of every member of the faculty ex- 
cept the President. The objection was that those subjects were 
not fit for a place in the curriculum ! Why should his work 
have an easier time making its way than every previous wid- 
ening outlook? Randall liked to dream of his subject set- 
ting such a pace that it could presently afford to take breath 
at the top of the last hill climbed, and look back compassion- 
ately on the stragglers struggling up the slope. His vote 
among the sociologists was always for keeping at their weav- 
ing while the demand was developing for their goods. There 
was grim resolution back of his playful dictum that the found- 
ling social sciences were fast outgrowing their knee-pants, and 
would soon have to be cutting their clothes from sociological 
cloth. 

A moment's lull followed Randall's protestation of reluc- 
tance to break in on a pleasing pastime. Nor was it imme- 
diately apparent whether he was accepting or declining the 
challenge ; but that he was not over-awed by the symposium 
needed no confirmation after he began to speak. He wielded 
a plausible drawl, and it was one of the accessories that ef- 
fectively confused the proportions between the facetious and 
the serious when he was intentionally non-committal. 

Although he affected a patronizing tone toward the dis- 
cussion, he saw signs in what had been said that the coterie 
was promisingly agnostic about some things which it had 
never before openly questioned. He wanted to help the good 
work along, and he thought it was a psychological moment for 
giving it a lift, but he warned himself that the jig would be 

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THE SOCIOLOGIST 



up if he betrayed signs of going at the subject very literally. 
Before allowing himself to be inveigled, he sparred defen- 
sively a few seconds with several assailants at once, and there 
was little to suggest the propagandist when he finally settled 
back, with fingers matched over his watch-chain, in decent 
didactic style, as sign of preparation to impart instruction. 

"Well then," he began, "since you children insist on romp- 
ing in my workshop, I must quit my job and watch what will 
happen. You play with the tools and act now and then as 
though you might accidentally toss off a respectable piece of 
work. You might be charged with spasms of almost social 
intelligence sometimes, if you weren't so coy about being 
caught in the act. Some day you'll come tiptoeing 'round to 
our shack begging us to connect up your social theories that 
stop just short of going alone. You'll find us ready to let by- 
gones be bygones. We'll help you out, and we won't even say 
'I told you so.' You've evidently nibbled on the sly at wind- 
falls from the tree of knowledge, but the thing you'll no 
doubt swallow whole, one of these days, is the process concep- 
tion of life; and then you'll blame the sociologists for not 
naming an earlier date for a new heaven and earth." 

Randall radiated on the company one of his most suavely 
patriarchal expressions, which was his method of advertising 
that he did not think it expedient to presume on their ripe- 
ness for further revelations. 

Fessenden was the first to call him: — "Now you've got 
your foot in, Randall, go the route! Let us see if you can 
make a crossing!" 

"Oh ! I should hate to ride Dapple Gray too hard in an ex- 
hibition heat," feinted Randall. 

"Give us the rest of it, Randall," badgered Gregory, of the 
Divinity School. "We'll let you off for freeing your mind 
this time." 

Randall was in fact by no means sure how he could say his 
say without lapsing into shop talk. There was another re- 
version into general chatter, all aimed at harrying him into 
further offense or defense. When he had resisted enough to 
insure a hearing, he resumed, with an availing injured-inno- 
cence effect : — 

"Although you have no use for my way of thinking, it 
may please you if I pay a passing compliment to yours. The 
flow of soul of which I have been an enraptured observer this 

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evening has unfolded to me your dazzling conception that life 
is a nest of boxes. With hardly restrained delight I have made 
out your penetrating idea that the puzzle is to find which be- 
longs inside of which. I notice that you expect some day 
to get them all correctly assorted, and cozily stowed away, each 
in its foreordained place ; whereupon the millennium will be 
ready to receive callers. You make some brave little sorties 
with other catch-words, but you don't get beyond retreating 
distance from your cubby-hole conception. Your heaven and 
hell are just the biggest boxes in the outfit, where your ma- 
chine-turned righteous and wicked are to be stationary in their 
respective eternities ; and your society is an assortment of the 
same sort of boxes, set on wheels and cut up into compart- 
ments to match the various calibres of your good and bad 
contract-labor migrants, consigned through this intermediate 
human state to the final distributing point. I hate to 
disturb your party with the news that the whole thing you've 
arranged for in this smug fashion is not a nest of boxes at all. 
It's a continuous performance transformation scene, and the 
play is for all the actors to scamper every minute to find them- 
selves in the new setting. 

"That's only the beginning; but if you'll run home by and 
by, and think over it quietly, I don't mind telling a little 
more of the tale. You can piece it out for yourselves from 
things you may see any day out of your own windows, if you 
don't put too many old age spectacles on your noses." 

"At this rate, Randall, you'll reach the climax that the sun 
usually rises in the east and sets in the west," was Fessenden's 
note of appreciation. 

"No! No!" cheerfully retorted Randall. "God forbid my 
too rudely jostling anyone's sustaining faith that the sun has 
gone into a permanent decline." 

Randall rapidly calculated that his psychological moment 
could not last always, and he pulled out a few more stops, 
rather with a view to volume than distinctness. 

"You'll have to take my word for it. Your glossaries don't 
English our Yiddish. But the truly wise in their generation 
have found out that a hurry-call has gone in to change over 
the world's morals from a categorical to a functional basis. 
It's a cryptogram to all but the psychologists, and they may 
have got the key before we did. They've been so busy rum- 
maging the secret drawers of consciousness with it, however, 

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that they've left pretty much all out-doors to us. There may 
be some quicker way, but the only direction I can give for 
finding out what it means, is to Summer it and Winter it till it 
seems like home folks. Traces of it have seeped into the heads 
of a few people ever since philosophizing began, but it is still 
known to commerce only under the poison sign. Meanwhile, 
a good deal that has passed as immorality has been virtue trav- 
eling incog — that is, irrepressible nature forcing practice 
ahead of rules." 

Randall again affected pained surprise at the small fire of 
sarcasm that greeted his runic generalizations. 

"I know it sounds a little heavy for Mother Goose," he apol- 
ogized, "but I'm only used to saying it to people who have 
learned the lingo. I don't know whether it will strike you as 
more condensed or diluted, but as a pedagogical plunge I'll 
try — happy thought! I'll give you a few leaves out of my 
Constructive History Studies, designed and executed for the 
use of infants of days at a stage of arrested precocity which I 
can imagine without complete segregation from the present 
company." 

The medley of "Hear I Hear!" and "Boo! Boo!" in mascu- 
line and feminine chorus, was in tune with Randall's temper, 
and served its purpose of prodding his effort. 

"Also!" he began. "Once upon a time the world woke up. 
One fine morning somebody, whose name has unfortunately 
been forgotten, stopped grubbing on the ground-worm plan 
and said to himself, 'There's something in my mind's eye 
that doesn't exist anywhere else ; but it looks worth while and 
I'm for it! Therein the scheme of things first showed its 
hand. From that on the mind's eye sets the mark, and the 
human process begins as a game of see-it-first-and-get-all-of-it- 
I-can. 'Twas a great thing for the world, this birthday of the 
mind's eye game, and if we only knew what day of the month 
it fell on, we might sometime make it a bigger holiday and a 
saner than the Fourth of July. At the start, it's no very nice 
game, nor a polite. The mind's eye doesn't picture very lady- 
like things, and there's no great squeamishness about how to 
get them. It turns out later though that the whole game is 
a way of getting the mind's eye to see things better worth 
while, and improving tastes about ways of putting them on the 
active list. The things first in the mind's eye don't keep their 
attraction very long. Either getting them or finding them 

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out of reach leaves the mind's eye free to pick out something 
else ; and after the game is fairly under way there is no telling 
how fast these new worth-whiles will put in an appearance. 

"Minds' eyes get pointed toward new things partly by find- 
ing other minds' eyes standing in their light. Some things 
look all the more worth while if other mind's eyes are watch- 
ing them, and grabbing grows greedier on that account. 

"After a bruising time of playing the game under devil- 
take-the-hindmost rules, a few minds' eyes get a picture of a 
game of live-and-let-live. It seems as though that might be a 
mighty restful change from the game of grab. A lot of peo- 
ple get excited over rules for playing it. Other people can't 
make it look good. They so conveniently get what they want 
under grab rules that they don't care to take risks with dif- 
ferent regulations. 

"So, instead of getting a chance to settle down quietly, the 
folks with live-and-let-live in their minds' eye have a more 
rough-and-tumble time than ever with the folks who have 
only grab in their eye. At last the gentler folk so far out- 
count the rougher that, by sheer force of numbers, live-and- 
let-live becomes the game. No more knocking on the head. 
No more making some people slave for the rest. No more 
taking some people's food and clothes away because other peo- 
ple want to be fatter and warmer, or because they find it easier 
to rob than to work. That's all foul. The game now is for 
everyone to have his own things. If anyone doesn't consent 
to this, everyone else is to join in and make him. 

"The live-and-let-live game enjoys no end of popularity 
till folks have cleared the way for playing it. There is some 
sadness over parting with the mind's eye, to be sure; but 
there's never a gain without some small loss. Though there'll 
be nothing for a mind's eye to do, after the live-and-let-live 
game begins, the fun of the game will more than make up 
for any benefit that used to come from watching out for better 
things. 

"But it is not so very long before folks find that it isn't 
working that way. Somehow or other the mind's eye gets 
busier than ever, and it finds a whole lot of new things worth 
while. It's a glorious thing to play a game in which every 
one is let alone by everyone else, and everyone is free to make 
the most of oneself, according to one's own sweet will. All is 
as gay as a May-day frolic when the new rules go into force ; 

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but before long the fun begins to flag. Perhaps the prospect 
is too bright for the mind's eye to bear. At any rate, many 
complaints are heard that things look queer. The live-and- 
let-live game has the field, yet folks are not happy, and the 
minds' eyes seem all at sea. They are filled with such a fog 
of ugly things-as-they-are, that they can't make steady pic- 
tures of things that would be worth while. This live-and-let- 
live game has got folks into a nasty mess. It never was so in- 
tended in the least. No one would have thought it before- 
hand, but living in one's own way, and letting everyone else 
do the same, came to a pass where a few minds' eyes made out 
that if some kinds of folks lived in their way, they played the 
mischief with other kinds of folks who wanted to live another 
way. Some folks wanted to earn their daily bread, and eat it 
with as little fuss as need be, and then to spend the rest of 
their time wholesomely exercising their minds and bodies, 
or in making merry with their friends. Other folks could 
see nothing worth while but stores of bread ; and not satisfied 
with eating their own and then living decent lives, they spent 
their time cornering the bread that other folks needed to eat. 
The first kind of folks said that the second kind of folks were 
making a fool of the whole game. They not only wanted to 
play for bread alone, but they turned all the bread they didn't 
want to eat into a form that was not fit for anyone else to eat, 
but was useful only for making more useless bread. This was 
a quirk in the live-and-let-live rules that nobody had expected 
and nobody understood. The deuce of it was that it seemed to 
make everybody's mind's eyesight worse and worse. Nobody 
was any longer fit to be trusted about what was worth while. 
The folks that wanted to do nothing but heap up the stale 
bread couldn't see straight about what was worth while for 
their bodies or their minds or their friends ; but most of those 
who didn't care for bread not necessary for food, also sadly 
neglected body and mind and friends, because the necessary 
food was so fearfully hard to get. The live-and-let-live game, 
that looked so brave before it was tried, had turned out to 
mean, Everybody let Smith live as he pleases, even if Smith 
finds a way to live so that Jones must live in Smith's way or 
not live at all. 'Twas bully for Smith, but rough on Jones. 
But the Jones tribe outnumbered the Smiths a hundred to 
one, and when the Joneses found their affairs going from bad 
to worse, many of their minds' eyes grew quite wild, hunting 

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for something worth while when the game was getting so 
mixed." 

Randall's parody had caught on with the company. It put 
the issue they were all bothered about in such third-personal 
shape that it did not strain the group code. At the same time, 
this homely whittling down to a point gave everyone the feel- 
ing that Randall was really saying something, whether they 
could agree with it or not. For once The Riffraff dropped its 
disguise and became for the moment perniciously thoughtful. 
Probably no one in the lot was less likely to be convinced than 
Tracey of the Law School ; but so far as he went he spoke the 
sense of the meeting, both in the spirit and in the saving rem- 
nant of sporty letter, when he encouraged : — "Run your string 
out, Randall ! We're with you, win or lose." 

Accepting the terms as all that could reasonably be de- 
manded, Randall proceeded: — "Just as a great many folks 
were getting desperate, and vowing the only thing to do was 
to break up the game altogether, some minds' eyes, that had 
been watching the game without making much head or tail 
out of it, got an image of a new worth-while. They caught a 
little different slant of light on the game, and the rules of 
]ive-and-let-live had become live-and-help-live. 'Twas aston- 
ishing how different the game looked ! 'Twas hard to recog- 
nize it as the old game at all. 

"It didn't take long before these few people, with a new 
worth-while in their minds' eyes, began to hear from one an- 
other. After a bit they got in the habit of coming together 
between innings, squatting down on the grass, and talking 
over improvement of the game. One would say, 'All the 
chance there is in the world belongs to us all alike, to play the 
game for all it's worth. Why should any of us have the right 
to block the game for the rest of us?' 

"Then another would say, 'Yes, indeed! Why? It's all 
well enough for us to let one another live in our own way, but 
what's going to happen when we get in one another's way?' 

" 'That's the talk !' chimes in a third; 'have the Smiths any 
more right to get in the Joneses' way than the Joneses have in 
the Smiths'? If the Joneses want to enjoy their bodies and 
their minds and their friends, after they've earned enough 
bread to fill their stomachs, why should they be prevented by 
the Smiths' craze for cornering bread?' 

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"Then a fourth would get in his word : — 'Everybody with 
his mind's eye open knows now-a-days that the worth-while 
is to have just enough bread so we can make the most of our 
bodies and our minds and our friends. If we make too much 
of the bread, we scamp the other things ; and if we try to do 
without the bread, and have the other things, we slip up on 
the whole business. We're all out after the worth-while, but 
nobody can do everything. No one has any more right to try 
for the worth-while than another. No one has any right to 
hinder another's trying. It looks to me as though the only 
way to get the most of the worth-while is for everybody to join 
in helping everybody else, by swapping off chances that we 
can't use to piece out our own worth-while, for chances that 
the other fellow can't use. In that way each will fill out his 
own worth-while, with the least surplus of not-worth-while on 
his hands.' 

" 'That's all very well,' puts in a fifth, 'but what are you 
going to do if some of the Smiths won't play that way? 
They're always saying it's none of their affair if the Joneses 
are short of worth-while. The Smiths have got things fixed 
so they can get all the fresh bread they want, and can humor 
their fad of piling up stale bread ; while the Joneses have got 
to stop trying for the other worth-whiles and help the Smiths 
heap up their musty bread, in order to get a bare living al- 
lowance.' 

" 'I'll tell you what!' shouts a sixth. 'There's always got to 
be some Johnsons in the game to tell both Smiths and Joneses 
when they're offside. Nobody ought to be allowed in the game 
that isn't working out a part of the worth-while for everybody 
else. Instead of the Smiths and the Joneses crowding each 
other out of their different sorts of worth-while, it's as you 
just said, Number 4. Each ought to have a fair agreement 
to piece out the unfinished parts of the others' worth-while 
with some of the surplus of his own worth-while. If either of 
them clog this arrangement by carrying their own worth- 
while too far, it should be the Johnsons' business to call a halt, 
and tell them this isn't the old false-pretense live-and-let-live 
game any more ; it's the improved live-and-help-live game.' 

"About that time someone not so noisy as the rest would 
speak up. 'I've been thinking,' he would say, 'and I believe 
I can see where we've been making our mistake. We've talked 
as though it wasn't one game at all, but as many different 

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games as there were people, and each a game of solitaire going 
on in each one's private room, that had no connection with 
anyone's else private room. If that had been the case, our 
live-and-let-live rules would have been perfect, if we had made 
it impossible for anyone to break into anyone's else private 
room. But the fact is that all sorts of wires and tubes and 
levers and belts and wheels connect everyone's room directly 
or indirectly with everyone's else room. The tenants in some 
of the rooms wanted to use all this machinery as though it be- 
longed to their rooms alone, and didn't care what effect it had 
in other rooms. That presently tangled the machinery up so 
it may any minute stop altogether.' 

"That would start another of the quieter men. 'I agree 
with the last speaker in the main,' he would say, 'but his fig- 
ure is confusing. The fact is we must go back to the simple 
rudiments of the game. The whole thing is experience of 
our minds' eyes in sighting worth-whiles that are all-in-all 
more worth while than what had passed for worth while ; and 
experience of our all 'round abilities in getting those minds' 
eyes' worth-whiles into reality. Now the thing we've run 
up against is that the Smith kind of folks want the game to 
stop with their kind of worth-while, instead of keeping on to 
other folks' worth-whiles. We've got to make up our minds 
that it takes all the different sorts of worth-whiles that the dif- 
ferent kinds of players discover to make up the big worth- 
while of the whole game. And we may as well decide first as 
last that something is wrong if anyone's worth-while is put- 
ting anyone else out of the game. What we need is a code of 
rules that will make the whole game set the limits for any lit- 
tle part of the game, instead of allowing the Smiths to run 
their own game and other people's too.' 

"The upshot was that all the folks who stopped to talk the 
matter over between innings agreed that live-and-help-live 
ought to be the game, and that everybody would get more out 
of it in the end, after it was fairly learned, than they were get- 
ting out of the live-and-let-live game. 

"But the more people joined in these between-inning talks, 
and the more worth while the live-and-help-live game seemed 
in their minds' eyes, the gustier it looked for the game as it 
was going on. These between-inning talks were of course 
passed along to everyone in the game, and while they were 
taking place some of the Joneses started to throw mud at some 

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of the Smiths. Then some of the Smiths of course shied stones 
at some of the Joneses, and it really looked as though the game 
might go back to the old bruise and kill and grab, before it 
could reform itself into live-and-help-live. 

"One of the troubles was that, although the Smiths were not 
all agreed among themselves that the new rules would be bad, 
nor all the Joneses that the rules would be good, on the whole 
the Smiths fought them, while the Joneses defended them, 
and the Smiths had to stick with the Smiths, and the Joneses 
with the Joneses, so that the game was no longer on its merits, 
but it was turned into a row between the Smiths and the 
Joneses, neither caring much for the others nor for the rest 
of the players. 

"That is as far as the thing has got. If you read tomorrow 
morning's newspaper with your eyes wide open, you'll see 
that nothing much has been going on today except that a good 
many different breeds of Smiths have been charging ahead 
with their own particular worth-whiles, regardless whether 
they bowled over any of the Joneses' worth- whiles or not. At 
the same time the Joneses have been just as nasty toward the 
Smiths, but not quite so successful. If there is anything 
worth noticing in the paper beside this, you will have to find 
it mostly between the lines. If the papers know it, they don't 
print it. The fact is that this jumble of the game really 
worth playing, that is growing so senseless under the hypo- 
critical live-and-let-live rules, is dividing the people into two 
opposing camps, the camp that is bound the rules of live- 
and-help-live shall come, and the camp bound they shall not 
come. The only moves of first-rate importance in the world 
today or any other day, till the rules are revised, are ground 
gainers for one or the other of those camps. The thing we're 
deciding now, and probably for a good many generations to 
come, is whether the rules hereafter are to be dictated by the 
dog-in-the-manger, or by the whole farm." 

Translating Randall's story as it went along, into terms of 
the pending labor situation in Chicago, the group had really 
listened with a good deal of respect. Something more seemed 
to be looked for, and as a transition from his pedagogical role 
Randall concluded: "All of which, being interpreted, sim- 
mers down to the inevitable : — When a real demand arises for 
more thorough publicity of any human activity, or for a more 

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general franchise of all the actors in bringing their full per- 
sonality into play in the whole activity, democracy is march- 
ing on, and some time or other, in some way or other, the de- 
mand is bound to prevail." 

No one was quite ready to commit himself either for or 
against this sweeping thesis. Even Fessenden leaned more to- 
wards Randall's ideas than he thought it was professional eti- 
quette to admit. To bluff out his opposition he good na- 
turedly sneered : — 

"Behold how History again repeats herself! The senti- 
mental mountain labors and brings forth the sociological 
mouse 1" 

"No doubt it looks that way if one has reached the creepy 
stage," calmly assented Randall. "Keep your eye on the 
mouse though, while you're sobering off, and see it grow into 
the army of occupation." 

"Time's up !" announced Edgerly. "Cakes and ale in the 
kitchen !" 

Even that euphemism was almost sumptuous for the rations 
the rules allowed ; but the dining room scene was always the 
epilogue of The Riffraff play. As the migrating movement 
began, Randall raised his voice for a parting pronounce- 
ment : — 

"I almost forgot something," he appended. "I'd just like 
to leave in your minds another version of my original text. 
It'll pay to ponder it : — The sap of the tree of life is any juice 
that makes it grow; not the prunings and the groomings it 
gets from foresters and horticulturists/' 



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THE WAR COLLEGE 



XIX 

THE WAR COLLEGE 

'It ought to be easy for old college men to take up a mooted 
question in the same spirit they used to show when they 

got a good grip on a subject for debate If there 

was something to be said after all for the moon's being 
made of green cheese, it never entered their heads to block 
discussion by pleading vested rights." 



HESTER and Elsie, with Halleck, rode in Logan Lyon's 
auto the few blocks to the Kissingers' house. They were 
hardly in their seats when Lyon started to unburden his 
mind : — 

"No mistake about it, there's something freaky in this sea- 
son's Chicago air ! Everyone is catching it. That man Ran- 
dall pretty near had me going. If I believe what he seems to, 
I don't know it, but several of the things he said might have 
been cribbed from my own words, when I was having some 
fun with a bunch of our directors the day we heard the strike 
decision last Spring. I've said a lot of such things in kidding 
matches with Edgerly, but they have a different sound when 
they come back at you from the other fellow. You have all 
pimpled out at times with the same rash, and there's your 
father, Elsie, not to speak of Graham's eruption, and Edgerly 
would have been safer quarantined years ago. I suspect that 
whole University crowd would vote for anarchy tomorrow, if 
they had a chance with the Australian ballot." 

"And if we had you strung up by the heels, Logan," ban- 
tered Halleck, "and shook your pockets out, wouldn't we 
gather in a few stickers of the same color?" 

"That's the devil of it," sputtered Lyon. "Nobody knows 
how much he is smeared with the same pitch. They're al- 
ways saying we must change human nature before we can 
alter the institutions of society. If these conniptions mean 
anything, the human nature is looking out for its share all 
right. I'm getting a flying start toward a flop into the fatal- 
ism that it will take a revolution to bring us straight up 
against lunacy as it works. A little of it in practice would be 



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good and plenty, and then we'd be in a pious state of mind 
for hard sense." 

" Suppose we should begin to inure ourselves to the rig- 
ors," Hester mildly mocked, "by dismissing the machine and 
going the rest of the way afoot?" 

"You two precious plotters may go the rest of the way 
afoot," fumed Lyon, as they made the landing in front of the 
Kissingers', and, as he handed the latchkey back to Elsie he 
added: — "I hope the smell of the powderless smoke of this 
nefarious evening won't disturb the good people inside." 

As soon as the two men were alone, Halleck opened upon 
Lyon with more hope of starting something than he had in- 
dulged since the strike began : — '"Logan, the next thing that's 
got to happen is a friendly talk-out between you and Gra- 
ham !" 

Lyon made no response for a moment. He had gone over 
the possibilities of conference and conciliation and arbitration 
so many times, he had sounded the temper of both sides, and 
particularly his own, in so many ways, that Halleck's idea 
suggested to his mind nothing that had not over and over 
again been tried and found wanting. His expression was 
less indifferent than skeptical, but it said directly enough that 
he saw no encouragement to consider the proposition, when 
he languidly answered : — "Is it a frame-up for Graham?" 

"No !" returned Halleck, and he was neither surprised nor 
cooled by Lyon's listlessness. "It's the break-away of the ir- 
resistible power and the impenetrable mass. This thing has 
got to end some time. Two bulks of brute force are pounding 
each other to cinders now. That catapulting will go on till 
there's nothing left of one or both, or this battle of the ele- 
ments has got to change soon into a fair appraisal of reasons. 
You're the first point on the Company's side, Logan, in the 
line of least resistance. You've got to be the transformer, if 
the two currents ever get to work again as one. How it's go- 
ing to be done I don't know any better than I did at the start, 
but nobody in the days of direct messenger service from 
Heaven was surer of special orders from the Almighty than I 
am that it's up to you and Graham to negotiate a truce of 
God." 

"If it had been my personal problem," consented Lyon 
frankly, but rather to the impulse than to the application, 

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"there wouldn't have been any fight till we had tried all there 
was in the face to face method. Whatever liberty he may 
have to give advice, however, there is nothing at last for a 
subordinate officer but to obey orders, and that tells the story 
of my part in the campaign. One doesn't often turn the trick 
of dissecting one's private from one's official personality, and 
it's a nasty thing to slip up on ; but if you think you have any 
way to keep it a purely individual affair, with no real or con- 
structive commitment of the Company, I would rather have 
a session with Graham than not, even at this late day. I don't 
see that anything could come of it, beyond quieting our curi- 
osity, but I'll balk at nothing that has a ghost of a show to 
help matters." 

Before they parted at Halleck's door Lyon had put him- 
self in his friend's hands to the extent of reserving Thursday 
evening for dinner with him at the Casino ; and Halleck had 
undertaken to contrive an accidental crossing of paths with 
Graham. 

Even if Halleck had been capable of more indirection with 
Graham than with Lyon, it would have defeated his purpose. 
Both principle and policy obliged him to state the facts just 
as they were, and to make virtually the same appeal the next 
morning which had won the night before. Under the same 
provisos that the interview must count as strictly personal, 
with no representative value, Graham consented to make one 
of his frequent calls at the Casino Thursday evening. It 
was left to Halleck to complete the connection in such a way 
that it would either not be noticed at all or rated as entirely 
casual. 

Graham had not neglected to compile from Halleck a 
Baedecker of Lyon's make-up. He was not in the least sur- 
prised that these details, fitting so easily into the showing he 
had watched at the Edgerly's, flatly contradicted all he had 
encountered in Lyon's professional behavior. Indeed, this 
contradiction was precisely one of the typical cases which he 
alleged of the impossible paradox in our institutions. In his 
own words, he had declared war against a system which stulti- 
fied the personality of its operators. As he expressed it to him- 
self, the whole thing he was fighting for was a new deal by 
which the best of them would agree to reverse the surrender 

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of their real selves to economic dictation, and would under- 
take to subject their business selves to their personal stand- 
ards. 

The chance to try conclusions with a man of Lyon's kind 
flushed Graham with new joy of battle. He did not so much 
want to defeat Lyon as to make such a fight that it would 
presently force them both into some position where they 
could fight on the same side. 

He could not have planned the skirmish more carefully if 
it had been an agreed duel to decide the campaign ; but when 
Halleck brought the two principals together in the man- 
ager's room neither would have given a spectator reason to 
suspect anything out of the commonplace in the encounter. 

After the sort of greeting that might have passed between 
two law partners who happened to find themselves side by 
side in a street car, Graham led off as he might if the subject 
had been the last topic discussed in their office : — 

"It ought to be easy for old college men to take up a mooted 
question in the same spirit they used to show when they got 
a good grip on a subject for debate. They didn't care whose 
ox was gored. They wanted to go to the bottom of the ques- 
tion. If there was something to be said after all for the moon's 
being made of green cheese, it never entered their heads to 
block discussion by pleading vested rights." 

"Brave boys !" endorsed Lyon ambiguously. "Neither did 
it enter their heads that whichever way it turned out would 
make no difference in the date or the size of the next remit- 
tance from father." 

"That may have had something to do with it," nodded 
Graham, "but every thoroughbred in the lot would have 
chipped in the remittance any time to see the thing either way 
to a Q. E. D. finish. Perhaps you will set it down as butter- 
fly-chasing, but I have more hope of curing capitalism by 
transfusion of new blood from the colleges than from any 
other one factor." 

"I'm not quite that sanguine," Lyon demurred, "I don't 
look to the colleges to turn business into a communion of 
saints, but as the Scotch candidate for ordination said, when 
he'd been doing his duty by the doctrine of justification by 
faith, and the question turned to 'works' : — 'Of coorse, I hae 
nae doot it micht be a' richt tae hae a few.' " 

326 



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THE WAR COLLEGE 



"There's more to it than that," persisted Graham. "I never 
could see that mental Swedish movement on the phylo- 
genesis of the ethical dative could train a boy for anything 
but shirking a man's job ; but that's getting to be ancient his- 
tory. Even if he is afterwards plumped, as I was, into the ice- 
bath of a millionaire's situation, no boy fit to be out of a home 
for the weak-minded can spend two or three years in the kind 
of running down social cause and effect that's going on in the 
colleges now, and ever be quite at his ease in the Philistine 
Zion of capitalism." 

On the whole, the opening had tended to strengthen Hal- 
leck's expectations. He could not have proposed a line of 
approach more likely to command Lyon's respect. While 
barring himself from the combat, he was watching like a lynx 
for signs on either side to indicate possible leanings toward 
accommodation of views. If he had known less about the 
resistance to be overcome in Lyon, and especially around him, 
the next few sentences would have given him the feeling that, 
as Graham fortified his position, all was settled but the for- 
malities : — 

"I'm taking a flyer that you yourself, Mr. Lyon, will turn 
out to be a case in point," was Graham's next advance. "The 
old words and the old social arrangements can do a whole lot 
to keep the new ideas from showing what is in them, but it's 
only a question of time. Our generation learned the language 
of things fixed in an eternal state, but we couldn't think things 
that way to save our necks. Every day of our lives we get a 
little nearer to change of base from things as they are classi- 
fied to things as they work. The nearer we get to that point 
the less are we able to accept anything because it is, and we 
put everything in the suspect class till it can justify itself 
by what it does. If poetry, as someone said, is anybody's 
thought until it is everybody's, then I'm poet enough to hold 
that business will be just bushwhacking with its clothes 
changed till we go at every question that comes up anywhere 
in the neighborhood of business, as the War College fellows 
handle their problems. It doesn't matter whether they label 
themselves Uncle Sam or John Bull ; they want to know just 
how strong or weak a position is, and how much force could 
be brought against it. If they started in by getting mad and 
swearing they'd court-martial the first man that dared to dis- 

327 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE WAR COLLEGE 



pute their theory, it wouldn't take them long to fall out of the 
strategy procession." 

"That's all right, Mr. Graham," ratified Lyon cordially, 
"but if it came to be war, instead of War College, and the 
enemy assaulted position and theory at once, the War College 
chaps wouldn't be good for much until they got mad and hit 
back. I'm with you, though, that this armistice means, for 
the time being, War College and not war. I'll be the Avery 
fortifications, and you may hammer me with all the theoret- 
ical bombardments you please. My defense will be simply 
that when you undertake to apply your theories in real war, 
you will shoot your bolt with the collapse of your commis- 
sariat. Upper ether and angels' food will never support opera- 
tions on terra firma." 

"I'll come to that a little later," noted Graham, "but as I'm 
the attacking party it won't do any harm for me to locate 
myself with reference to the Articles of War. You may have 
another order of importance for the clauses, but I'd like to 
mention two or three. Whatever you suspect about the 'upper 
ether and angels' food,' I suppose it isn't necessary for me to 
prove in the first place that I've made good in developing a 
base of supplies of your own sort. If I had made a fizzle of 
business, and had taken to reforming the world as an easier 
job, you might be safe in calculating that I couldn't fight with 
your weapons. You know what every bank in Chicago knows, 
however, about my rating, and how I got it; and that settles 
the question whether I have a business head. Then you want 
to know whether, outside of my personal resources, I have 
the wherewithal to support my undertaking. You want to 
know whether I am honest ; whether I am fighting or black- 
mailing ; and you want to know whether I have mapped out a 
campaign on a theory that will hold water. After all, this last 
is the main thing for a War College, and the other items 
are negligible. To save strength for the heart of the prob- 
lem, you can afford to assume at present that I am what I 
pretend. 

"While I am about it," Graham parenthesized further, with 
one of his arrestive index-finger gestures, "I may as well re- 
peat to you what I've said a hundred times to labor audiences, 
but it may not have got to your ears. I have no ill-will what- 
ever toward the Avery Company. I am very sorry it must 
suffer anything from me. If you directors and the rest of 

328 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE WAR COLLEGE 



the owners could just go through what the theology that 
Halleck is bringing down to date used to call 'a work of grace/ 
you'd be the very lads I'd expect most from in booming de- 
mocracy. I'd much rather be with you than against you, if 
you'd get on the right side ; and until a lot of your kind do 
get on the right side democracy is going to be mostly a pros- 
pectus." 

"It's a romantic sort of affection," ruminated Lyon, "that 
first endorses its neighbor as a desirable citizen, and then picks 
him out as the one man in town to shoot at!" 

"We can't institutionalize ourselves," Graham pronounced 
deliberately, "and forever get away with the profits without 
the liabilities. You get the law to re-create you as one of its 
artificial persons whose life-breath is capitalism. That same 
principle which supports your artificial person is the most 
wasting parasite of democracy. Everybody who uses his brains 
knows that either democracy or capitalism must sooner or 
later swallow the other. Everyone who prefers that democracy 
should do the swallowing is bound to hunt capitalism as long 
as it keeps out of democracy's game-bag." 

"Talking about passionless logic," mused Lyon, "your li- 
cense to hound capital, whether it has offended or not, is an 
interesting replica of the lamb getting his for spoiling the 
drinking water of the wolf up-stream." 

"At any rate," corrected Graham, as he felt that they were 
gradually getting into close quarters, "let's not lose our range 
by confusing the landmarks before we open fire. My quarrel 
is not with capital but with capitalism. To keep out of sav- 
agery, democracy must have capital as much as it must have 
food. Capital is as different from capitalism as water is from 
drowning. I mean by 'capitalism' a vicious principle of ac- 
cumulation institutionalized, along with its chartered as- 
sumption that the procurers for the principle are fore- 
ordained to dictate the remaining destinies of mankind. The 
fate of democracy will turn on its ability to put that assump- 
tion out of commission ; and every crusader against capitalism 
is bound to assault it wherever it is exposed." 

"That may be good piracy," recoiled Lyon, with signs 
that looked squally for the War College agreement, "but I 
take it you're claiming nothing for its morals or its man- 



ners." 



329 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE WAR COLLEGE 



"I am claiming everything due to the morals and the man- 
ners of the bayonet in a righteous cause," devoutly answered 
Graham. 

There was nothing of the braggart in his measured utter- 
ance. His calmness, almost solemnity, halted Lyon's slip to- 
ward contempt, and revived the impression of the Armory, 
that the man was not only in earnest, but had thought his case 
through, and was sure of his ability to maintain his position. 
For a few seconds neither spoke. Then, with the emphasis 
of repression, and with the same retarded tempo, Graham re- 
sumed : — 

"Nothing worth doing is ever done on time, whether it is 
expelling the Turks from Europe or introducing livelier sub- 
stitutes for psalm tunes, until some one takes his life in his 
hand. In this particular passage in the advent of democracy, 
the one thing needful is to save its force from dissipation on 
detached cases, and to get a decisive line-up between the prin- 
ciples behind the cases. More than that, democracy can never 
pass into the scientific stage till men whom capitalism has 
trained have been won over to enlist their talents on the hu- 
man side of the process. Count the egotism for all you will 
against me, but I believe I have as providential a call as any- 
body ever had to anything, to spend my life working toward a 
square deal between democracy and business. Thus far, the 
whole paltry catalogue of industrial caterwaulings, since capi- 
talism began to get in its work, has been mostly hysteric fid- 
dling of particular discords out of the concert, with scarcely 
a decent attempt to find out whether there were such things 
as underlying laws of harmony. So long as the democratic 
side of the conflict of principles can be broken up into a bed- 
lam of individuals disconnectedly tuning instruments, capi- 
I talism can fasten itself firmer on the world. I regard myself 
as a voice crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for some- 
thing better!' What little there turns out to be in me is en- 
listed for life to organize Americans on the principles of real 
democracy, and to drill them for a fair fight with capitalism. 
The Avery strike is merely the opening gun. It is easy to 
divide history into epochs in which people fought ooe an- 
other with their best eye shut. The boundary is drawn be- 
tween epochs at the point where people at last find out what 
has hurt them, and what they have been fighting about, and 
what they want, and sum up their findings in something 

330 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE WAR COLLEGE 



fundamental, and end the quarrels that uncertainty about 
this base line has bred, by taking it henceforth as their com- 
mon point of departure. For a hundred years or more capi- 
talism has been a gathering mutiny of the minority in every 
democratic ship of state. There is no covering up the ques- 
tion of principle any longer. It is a plain issue between the 
mutineers and the ship." 

Halleck wished he could hear Graham declaim that pas- 
sage in his most dramatic style before an audience that would 
cram the Auditorium. It had been spoken slowly, gently, but 
almost as fervently as a novice's vow of consecration. It af- 
fected Lyon more than he cared to show, especially as he 
liked Graham personally the better for it; but he was irri- 
tated by what he had schooled himself to regard as sentiment- 
alizing practical matters, and there was no concealment of it 
in his frosty objection : — 

"Suppose we cut out this sort of rehearsal for the jury, and 
put the case in shape for the court. You could easily make 
the solar system look ridiculous, if you expressed it in terms 
of a Summer-garden-thriller outfit, but it wouldn't help much 
toward revising the law of gravitation. This whole play-to- 
the-gallery trifling with the foundations of society is criminal 
the minute anyone threatens to take it seriously. You and I 
can't afford to waste any more time on this comic supplement 
style of rhetoric. Turn off the hot air, but I'm open to argu- 
ment on anything under the sun that can be put into a busi- 
ness proposition." 

"Very well," responded Graham good naturedly, "I've for- 
gotten most of my law language, and all that I ever knew 
about pleadings, but you are no more anxious than I am to 
get our case into literal terms that we can both accept as the 
basis of argument. In a word, this is my contention : — The 
whole economic and social theory which modern business 
takes for granted is radically mistaken. Our social problems 
are partly due to conditions beyond human control, but 
partly also to our fallacious theory of the conditions we may 
control. We shall never get on a secure basis for industrial 
peace until we overhaul our whole social theory, and reorgan- 
ize business according to a more intelligent analysis of the 
facts." 

331 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE WAR COLLEGE 



"Now we are getting down to brass tacks," relented Lyon. 
"No matter whether I admit anything or not, I'll save my 
argument till I've heard your bill of particulars." 

"There ought to be a few rulings from the Court of Ap- 
peals," expanded Graham, "before the law that I have to as- 
sume is perfectly clear; but our test cases are principally for 
the purpose of getting those rulings. The people a few gen- 
erations from now who inherit our social axioms with the 
tangles straightened out, will be able to give an account of the 
social process that will make our present philosophy look 
silly. You would probably challenge what I would lay down 
as first principles; so I will start a good way this side of the 
first, with an allegation of fact, viz : — Our whole social order 
is an attempt to do business on an economic basis that is a 
mathematical absurdity." 

"I can't help interrupting," Lyon again resisted, "to ask 
why, if it's as bad as that, the economists haven't found it out 
long ago?" 

"Plenty of them have," assured Graham, with a glance that 
seemed to say he was glad to be reminded of something. "I 
am not the first to see through the fallacy of capitalism by 
any means; but the men who have been in the saddle have 
been able to run every one off the range who showed signs of 
getting wise to the system. Those that hadn't shown the 
signs soon saw how things were going, and kept still. The 
consequence has been that practical men and theorists the 
world over have been in cahoots to keep up the credit of every 
one who looked at things through the capitalistic illusion, 
and they have managed to get everybody on the blacklist who 
threatened to see things as they are." 

"I didn't mean to open another rhetoric valve," disparaged 
Lyon. "Have you anything more under the head of facts?" 



332 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 

XX 

THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 

"The only producers of wealth are nature and labor 

nature and labor always supply the power, while capital 
is merely the grist and the millstone." 



THERE was apparent common consent to regard the pre- 
liminaries as arranged, and the disputants now settled 
down for hard work. 

"I'll ask you for your own answer to that question," prom- 
ised Graham, "after you have sampled my specifications. To 
begin with, capitalism banks on the assumption that capital 
itself is productive. Now unless you make the shell game out 
of your words, and put one meaning into the term 'capital' 
this minute and another the next, every penny of capital in 
the world is as sterile as a monthly statement. All we have 
to do to show this is to imitate the chemists, for instance, and 
'isolate our phenomena.' Strip away from capital everything 
that is the spontaneous working of nature on the one hand, 
or the exertion of human energy on the other, and capital no 
more produces anything than the pyramids or the merid- 



ians." 



"I don't want to quibble, Mr. Graham," interposed Lyon, 
"and I am not going to be patient when you do it. That 
sounds to me very much like the fake algebra that proves one 
is equal to zero." 

"The fake algebra has been so long on your side of the case, 
Mr. Lyon," retorted Graham, "that it makes the whole fact 
of aberration which I am pointing out. Take a bar of bullion 
in a bank vault, for instance. It might lie there forever with- 
out adding a millionth part to itself. Nevertheless capitalism 
permits that bullion to be in Chicago, while the man who owns 
it lives in Europe, yet the owner may collect a percentage of 
the value every year, and pass on to his descendants the priv- 
ilege of continuing the collection, till they have used up its 
equivalent over and over again ; but the original claim to the 
bullion is as good as ever. This scheme has all the other con 
games beat to a frazzle. The only producers of wealth are na- 
ture and labor. When wealth is once produced, labor can use 

337 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



some of it as capital, in the form of support for workers, raw 
material, tools, etc., and thereby make its cooperation with 
nature much more productive ; but nature and labor always 
supply the power, while capital is merely the grist and the 
millstone." 

"How can a man of your business experience," snapped 
Lyon, "talk as though that reserve of bullion in the vaults had 
nothing to do with the prosperity of business?" 

"How can a man of your intelligence," paraphrased Gra- 
ham, "talk as though having something to do with the pros- 
perity of business, and the 'productivity of capital/ are one 
and the same thing?" Graham was wondering whether he 
was dealing with the ordinary opaqueness of the capitalistic 
class bias, or only with a lawyer's ingenuity in putting the 
best face on anything that could favor his client. "You might 
just as well talk about the productivity of the plate you eat 
your soup from. If you're exploiting fallacies, you've got 
your artful dodger middle term 'productivity,' and you can 
shuffle it back and forth to suit the devil ; but if you're after 
the facts, you don't talk of the productivity of the plate in the 
same sense in which you speak of the productivity of the soil 
or of the farmer." 

Lyon saw no reason for taking issue with this obvious 
logical precision. He had even been preparing for it by a 
side line of reflection about Edgerly's argument to the Pa- 
triarchs on arbitrary associations between capital and prop- 
erty. He was too acute not to appreciate these abstract dis- 
tinctions, but his honest estimate of their importance for prac- 
tical purposes was in the slurring comment: — "I see no ob- 
ject in denying that you've split your words with the grain 
this time, but I'd as soon argue a tailors' strike on the ques- 
tion which blade of the shears cuts." 

"You know that isn't fair!" challenged Graham, with his 
first touch of bitterness. "Not which blade cuts, but whether, 
in the last analysis the shears cut or the hand that holds them, 
is the 'Art thou the King of the Jews?' of the capitalistic crisis. 
If you can't make cold science read the signs of the times, 
what is your sense of humor doing that it doesn't put you on 
to the saturnine paradox leering out of every line in your 
position ? You advertise business as the only rock-ribbed hu- 
man structure of literal matter-of-factness. At the same time 
it doesn't strike you as at all incongruous that the founda- 

338 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



tion of your bullying realism is a mystic Mephistophelian 
metaphysic of values in matter fated to overrule the values in 
men. It isn't, as your brute money ultimatums always imply, 
a monks' question of the capacity of a needle point as a dis- 
embodied spirits' dancing floor. It is capitalism's way of 
prejudging in its own favor the whole question of men's place 
in the world." 

The stiffness in Lyon's silence may have been more ex- 
pressive than words. Graham had no doubt of its meaning. 
He rose mechanically, and backing into the farthest corner, 
stood blinking from one to the other like a man coming out 
of a dream. The mood passed in a moment; and returning 
to his seat, with a careless air of release from duty to recrea- 
tion, he resumed on a lower level : 

"I've canvassed this thing so many times, from bottom to 
top and end to end, I can't realize that there's a debatable 
hair's breadth in it. It's like cramping myself back into an 
unconvinced state of mind about the spelling of words of one 
syllable. I no more expect to revamp our economic system in 
a minute than I count on putting our locomotion tomorrow on 
an air-ship basis, because we have found that the air can be 
navigated. But I do demand that honest men shall be as will- 
ing, in the one case as in the other, to admit general principles 
when they are discovered, and to stop barring the way of find- 
ing out what use they can be put to in furthering human 
purposes." 

"Well, Mr. Graham," submitted Lyon, with a deep-drawn 
sigh of partially reconciled resignation, "if you'll allow me 
to concede once for all that there's a safe reserve of star mist 
vaporing around the rim of space, I'm still ready to consider 
the question, What of it?" 

Because Graham was too much concerned with the collision 
of principles to be fussy about his personal dignity, he merely 
smiled at the sarcasm, and tried another approach. 

"As I was saying, then," Graham repeated, "our whole so- 
cial structure rests on an economic assumption that is a mathe- 
matical absurdity; and the chief lure into this absurdity is 
the productivity theory of capital. Now let me take a con- 
crete case, and show what we are called upon to believe when 
we pin our faith to that prop of capitalism." 

Graham produced his note book, and holding it up a mo- 

339 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



merit, with his fore-finger between the pages to which he had 
quickly turned, he further prefaced : — 

"Let us see now on which side is the star-gazing, and on 
which the arithmetic. I've carried these figures around with 
me a long time, and have tried them on many people. The 
best logic any one has ever been able to muster against them 
has looked more like an attack of bronchitis. Your convincing 
metaphysic of capitalism begins by endowing capital with 
a unique self-sufficiency of accretion. Suppose George Wash- 
ington had taken one step more in fathering his country, and 
had left to his posterity a perpetual object-lesson in the oper- 
ation of this alleged Aladdin's-lamp capacity of capital." 

Then, referring to his notes, Graham recited : — "In 1783, 
Congress reimbursed Washington for outlays from his own 
means during the war in the sum of $64,315, not mentioning 
the cents. Suppose Washington had decided to set that sum 
apart forever as a scientific demonstration of the creative 
power of capital. Suppose he had secured an act of Congress 
permitting the amount to accumulate at the rate of four per 
cent, compounded annually. In the year 1913, if the meta- 
physics worked according to schedule, that modest amount of 
capital would have become $10,535,440, and it would then be 
only just starting on its career." 

"But," pursued Graham, scanning Halleck and Lyon in 
turn to see how they were affected by the illustration, "we all 
know that the man in business who doesn't set his mark for 
profits as high as ten per cent, is a chump. If he makes that 
much he passes as fairly successful. To count as a financier 
he has got to make his capital net much more. Now Wash- 
ington is supposed to have been rather canny himself, and it 
would do injustice to his memory to assume that he would 
have been satisfied to leave posterity only a partial demonstra- 
tion of a fundamental truth. While he was displaying the 
power of capital he would surely demand for it something like 
a decent share of its rights. Let us suppose that he compro- 
mised on a rate of ten per cent compounded annually. Then 
he would have provided subsequent generations with some- 
thing like a respectable exhibit of the virtues of capital. Again 
assuming that there is nothing wrong in the metaphysics, the 
share of the wealth of the country to the credit of that invest- 
ment would have amounted in 1913 to the somewhat im- 
pressive total of fifteen thousand four hundred and sixty-five 

340 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



million, four hundred seventy four thousand, three hundred 
seventeen dollars. Compared with any sum in the possession 
of a living money magnate, that pile would be as a flagstaff 
to a walking stick !" 

Lyon had been taught the productivity theory of capital, 
and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not remember that 
he had ever heard money men argue the rights of capital with- 
out getting most of their leverage more or less directly from 
that 'metaphysic,' as Graham termed it. He was at the point 
of asserting that business ability of course would have to be 
called in to make the investment profitable. He saw at once 
though that this would be deserting his theory under 
fire. He had never seen the facts quite in the light of the illus- 
tration before, and no answer that occurred to him offered 
much resistance to its force. He was really playing for time 
when he entered the caveat: — "But no business man ever 
claimed that capital can roll up that way indefinitely!" 

It was Graham's term to be cynical. Tilting back in his 
chair, with the manner of a man who had things about as he 
wanted them, and could afford to let other people do the wor- 
rying, he composedly demanded : — "Will you kindly give me 
the address, Mr. Lyon, of any one outside our holy economic 
hierarchy, who can invite his soul with the flattery that his 
theory of life is a howling success, when the best that can be 
said in its favor is that it has to break down completely in 
order to work at all?" 

Lyon was not proud of himself as he further temporized : — 
"Suppose you explain what earthly connection there is be- 
tween your figures and a practical business proposition." 

No man was quicker to detect such connections, and the 
present instance was an inconvenient addition to the visible 
supply of "unavailables," but Lyon was not prepared to admit 
that it was more. 

"You do not need me to point out their meaning, Mr. 
Lyon," accused Graham, with revived intensity. "They show 
as plain as the sun shining in the heavens that the whole meta- 
physic vanishes into thin air the moment it is called on for an 
accounting. One of the few things I took with me from the 
history of philosophy was Kant's moral minimum : — 'Act al- 
ways according to a rule that is fit to be made a rule by every- 
body,' or words to that effect. I never was quite sure whether 
it meant anything different from the 'Golden Rule' in the 

341 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



Sunday School version ; but whether there is an extra wrinkle 
in it or not, nothing less, that I ever ran against, could make 
good as a safe standardizer of human actions. Your capital- 
istic metaphysics can't do business in the same firm with any- 
thing up to the level of the Kantian ethics. If everybody 
started at once to act strictly in accordance with the presuppo- 
sitions of your economic philosophy, there would be a world- 
wide drop into barbarism before the books of the first year's 
operations were closed, and general starvation in another year. 
The scheme seems to work, first because only a small fraction 
of the race are in on it, and second because we are still sweep- 
ing in the rich pickings from nature's surface. When we get 
to the bottom, there is only a difference of detail between the 
capitalistic programme and the 'woman's bank' plan of pay- 
ing dividends on earlier deposits from the later. The chain 
isn't endless. There must be a last link, and then ?" 

There was a cold chisel and auger effect in the rigidity of 
Lyon's features as he seemed to be boring into the argument. 
Getting no reply, Graham drew out his conclusion. 

"I have used the Washington illustration," he explained, 

"simply for the sake of the general fact. And I ought to 

have said at the start that this particular strike marks an era 
in labor difficulties, just because it makes an issue farther back 
on fundamental grounds than any other labor struggle I ever 
heard of. We lay down the principle that it is merely putting 
off the inevitable day of reckoning to try to reconcile labor 
differences on the basis of the present economic metaphysics ; 
and instead of puttering to improve results while we let the 
causes alone, we demand a rehearing of the whole theory of 
capitalism. Because the Avery Company stands pat on the 
mystical capitalistic metaphysics, instead of consenting to a 
readjustment of theories to facts, we have got to make our 
first fight against it- 



"But as I was saying : — Whether capital is actually getting 
one rate or another doesn't affect the principle. We are ex- 
ploiting nature, and producing wealth, and every time we 
turn a ton of goods into capital we add a corresponding 
amount to the fixed charges on the world's labor. Now where 
is this extra charge to come from? It can come from only four 
sources: First, new appropriations of nature; second, new 
technical processes; third, new labor efficiency; fourth, sub- 

3 42 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



traction from some one's share in the product. Under pres- 
ent conditions, there is no doubt whose share it will be." 

It was less the force of the reasoning which kept Lyon si- 
lent, than his surprise at the unfamiliar look of this whole 
section of capitalistic premises. He had assumed that he was 
at home in economic theory from A to Z. He was, in the parts 
of it which were closest to everyday application; but Gra- 
ham's argument had made him see that he had been as ama- 
teurish about the foundations of it as those people are in their 
religious views who plant themselves on the "cover-to-cover" 
conception of the Bible. While Graham did not quite fathom 
Lyon's reticence, he was sure he was making an impression, 
and he was quick to follow up the advantage. 

"If every scrap of surplus wealth had been consistently cap- 
italized," he recapitulated, "from the wooden soles under the 
peasant's feet to the bullion in tyrants' chests, civilization 
would have been brought to a standstill before it had fairly 
started. We could no more carry out the theory of capitalism 
than we could make our industries pay a royalty on every 
breath we draw. We have got to find a theory that will turn 
the accumulations of the race to the reducing of fixed charges 
instead of increasing them. We are bankrupting the world 
just as surely by attaching a cumulative power to capital, as 
though we were levying a progressive tax on industry to re- 
munerate the ocean for its uses to commerce." 

It was a soiled and sallow facetiousness with which Lyon 
emerged from his reflections ; but it did its best to create a di- 
version. "Would you fight me, Mr. Graham," insinuated 
Lyon, "because some of my progenitors believed that the sin 
of Adam doomed most of mankind to hell?" 

"Getting pretty desperate isn't it, Mr. Lyon, when we resort 
to such feeble efforts?" Graham's laugh was as stalwart as his 
logic, and his whole body joined in a pantomime of ridicule. 
"You won't convince anybody but yourselves that you are 
being called to account for the sins of your ancestors. We 
are righting today's sins of the Avery Company, and the es- 
sence of them is nothing past and gone, but refusal to open 
the question whether the past and gone must always dictate 
the future. We have inherited a theory of capital which 
seemed fairly well to account for the facts, when all the cap- 
ital there was consisted virtually of tools in the hands of the 
owners, who did with them their share of the world's work. The 

343 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



theory is a barefaced swindle when most of the capital that 
makes the trouble is out of sight of its owners, and they may 
or may not do any part of the world's real work with it. As 
an abstract proposition, which I know as well as you do we 
must hold subject to the compelling force of circumstances, 
there is no more sense in paying a royalty to capital than to 
the alphabet or the multiplication table. We support insti- 
tutions, and enforce attendance on them, for putting each 
generation in possession of the world's spiritual accumula- 
tions, but we load on each new generation a periodical and 
progressive fine for using our material accumulations. I 
can't pick out any better fun than puncturing that sort 
of a toy balloon. If I live long enough, there's going to 
be a start made towards a fair trial of the question why our 
whole system of social accounting should not be shifted from 
the capitalistic to the labor basis." 

Lyon foresaw that this meant a turn in the argument, and 
he felt a sense of relief in the prospect of passing to more fa- 
miliar fighting ground. Meanwhile he hoped to escape the 
appearance of having yielded anything, by the reservation : — 
"Before you get too far from the subject, let me call your at- 
tention to the fact that you have given away your whole case 
by your phrase 'compelling force of circumstances.' " 

"Foiled again!" repudiated Graham, mock-heroically. 
"When I say 'compelling force of circumstances,' I make full 
allowance for the whole scale of limitations, from natural laws 
to fillibustering hypocrites, — and what is life anyway, but a 
matching of men against circumstances? At the one ex- 
treme we get the absolute bounds of possibility, at the other 
the rate of practicability. The force of circumstances made 
it a long time after men knew the world was not flat before 
they could circle it in eighty days ; but the same circumstances 
did not justify the 'interests' in forcing people to assume that 
the earth was flat after it was proved to be round. More than 
that, the interests were presently eliminated from the cir- 
cumstances, and men have been working out their salvation 
ever since on a round world. The capitalistic mythology 
may die harder than the scholastic cosmology, but the 'com- 
pelling force of circumstances' can no more bring human 
progress to a halt in the one case than in the other." 

"Very well then," consented Lyon with a show of alacrity 
that invited inspection, "for the sake of argument let us sup- 

344 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE ILLUSION OF CAPITALISM 



pose we have settled something. Now what have we got? 
Capital is incapable of unlimited spontaneous reproduction; 
therefore, the Avery Company is under obligations to deliver 
over its management to outsiders. Have I stated it correctly, 
Mr. Graham?" 

The smile that relaxed the lines of Graham's face might 
have been put on to greet an opponent's excuses for losing the 
first hole. Graham was too good a sportsman to preen him- 
self over his successes ; but for the sake of the men behind him 
he was bound to keep Lyon on the defensive, and to force the 
fighting. Allowing a pause for his complacency to take ef- 
fect, he combined the two purposes in his next line of at- 
tack : — - 

"If you mean to assert on your honor, Mr. Lyon, that you 
can see nothing more in the case so far, I am quite content to 
let it rankle in your conscience for the present, while I turn 
the searchlight on another weak spot." 



345 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 

XXI 
THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 

"A theory of economic distribution which assigns an in- 
come to landlord or capitalist for any other reason than 

that which assigns a wage to the manual laborer is 

not merely a rape of justice but an insult to ordinary 
intelligence. ,, 

HALLECK understood Lyon so much better than Graham 
did, that his spirits had risen with every turn of the talk. 
He knew the limitations of Lyon's influence in the Company, 
but he also knew its strength. He knew the enormous differ- 
ence between Logan and his father, that whereas either would 
stake his life before he would violate his code, the older man 
was sure the business code was immutable, while the younger 
was equally sure of the abstract proposition that the morality 
of business, like business itself, along with the rest of life, is 
perpetually in the making. Halleck knew that Logan had 
only to be convinced of a moral weakness in the Company's 
position to become a power making for a change of attitude. 
He knew that nothing was so likely to convince Logan of 
weakness in his moral premises as conviction of their logical 
inconclusiveness. He could see that Logan's confidence in 
what Graham called the 'metaphysics' of business had been 
disturbed, and that he was open to reason about alternative 
conceptions of the economic process. It remained to be seen 
whether enough could be said to break down Lyon's assump- 
tion that no other conception is practical. 

There was less carrying power in Graham's appraisal of 
Lyon, but it made in the same direction. Graham had de- 
cided that Lyon was not the sort of man whose moral equa- 
tion was dubious after he was convinced. His will was not 
the wicked partner of his intellect. He would not change to 
a zealot for a new perception, but his testimony would never 
be perjured. It was some gain to show him that there were 
open questions about the antecedents of his working schedule ; 
and Graham deployed his reserves with an assurance that he 
had not felt when Halleck proposed the conference. 

"My second specification," announced Graham, "is that the 
capitalistic premises of distribution are as shifty as the myth- 

349 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



ology of production. And," he interpolated, "I assume it is 
unnecessary to point out that these academic abstractions have 
about the same interest for me that legal technicalities have 
for you. Either may make or mar real fortunes, and there- 
fore they must be watched ; but they are merely incidental to 
the main concern. My case is, in a word, that the premises 
of capitalism construe human relations as they are not, and 
that business and law compel acceptance of those premises 
by a conspiracy of force. I am showing up your premises not 
to win a debate, but to locate the real issue. The Avery Com- 
pany is simply capitalism personified at one spot, clamping 
the strait-jacket of an arbitrary conception of life upon the 
men who work with nature and give the world its wealth. 
The organization that you are fighting personifies humanity 
demanding the freedom of its functions. If human evolu- 
tion has passed into its senility we may lose ; but the workers 
of the world are its optimists." 

Lyon was again hesitating between irritation and amuse- 
ment. Ordinarily he would have dismissed such fluency of 
figurative expression as jugglers' passes to distract attention 
from clues to the illusion. He had heard Graham enough 
though to be sure that, right or wrong, he was not pushing 
forward a water-color perspective in advance of his calcula- 
tions and blue prints. Indeed he was beginning to suspect 
that, if Graham could be refuted, it would not be because his 
thinking had been shallower than that of the system he at- 
tacked. Graham had apparently taken the measure of that- 
veteran philosophy. The correction would have to come from 
analysis and reconstruction that would retire both tradition 
and revolt. 

Lyon dismissed the impulse, which had been strong earlier 
in the interview, to treat Graham as a word-artist instead of 
a thinker; but he tried to keep up the appearance of regard- 
ing his heresy as a joke. 

"If you hadn't labeled it, Mr. Graham," Lyon criticized 
triflingly, "I should never have thought of calling it a 'de- 
bate.' You might have got to me if you had said 'selections 
from a suffragette lyric contest.' " 

Graham was not thrown out of his stride a moment by 
Lyon's sarcasm, and it was as easy to keep ahead of him in 
that mood as in their most serious temper. The answer was 
ready: — "Don't you suppose the gum-shoe man thinks it's 

350 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



very flippant of the watchman to snap his dark lantern and 
show up the job? And if objections to the jocundity were 
spoken out, don't you suppose, under the circumstances, the 
levity would be likely to continue? If I illuminate a little 
vividly, it's just the jovial way old-fashioned honesty some- 
times has with certain types of shrinking innocence that pre- 
fer to operate in the dark." 

The three men spontaneously granted themselves a brief 
interlude of unbending over the invasion of this variety of 
esthetic criticism into the argument; but the intermission 
ended as suddenly as it had begun, and Graham forged ahead 
with his line of thought : — 

"I might have remained so stupidly technical that nothing 
but the Uriah Heepish old fictions would have appeared in 
the general effect; but since you have called my attention to 
it, I may as well play up the lights and shadows with a lurid- 
ness that will bring out some resemblance to reality. I had in 
mind a historical disquisition at this point, on how we hap- 
pened to be tangled up in the philosophy of life that the Avery 
Company represents. No sane man could find that set of 
connections in present-day facts, if he didn't carry it to them 
from some snap-judgment in the past. In deference to your 
appreciation of my poetic gifts, Mr. Lyon, I will vary the treat- 
ment and put it this way : — 

"Adam Smith missed the chance of his life to smother 
capitalism in the cradle, by not having the courage of his in- 
sight. He started out to say that nature and labor were the 
only producers ; but British society stared him out of counte- 
nance, and he forgot it. He saw Englishmen divided into 
landlords, capitalists and laborers; whereupon he intoned a 
Gloria over the eternal fitness of things, and improvised the 
Holy Gospel that ever since heads all the rest in upper-class 
prayer books : — 'Land, labor and capital are the factors of 
production, therefore landlord, laborer and capitalist must 
be the parties in distribution.' It was a little looser thinking 
than we should do if we observed that owners, passengers and 
crew are the classes visibly connected with an Atlantic liner ; 
and forthwith concluded: — 'Owners, passengers and crew 
make the ship go; therefore, owners, passengers and crew 
divide the proceeds of the trip.' " 

"Let's see," arrested Lyon, with further backslidden irrev- 
erence; "isn't that the old refrain, instead of a new stanza?" 

3 51 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



Graham saw at once that there was something to be said for 
the charge, but he brushed it away in the same tone in which 
it was made. " You're evidently not keen for this style of art, 
Mr. Lyon. It's not the old refrain but the second movement 
in the symphony. Your ear sifts out some of the original mate- 
rial, but doesn't locate the new purpose. I'm not going to 
argue the productivity question over again; but I am now 
showing that your metaphysic of production commits you to 
an entirely disqualifying preconception of distribution. Your 
assumption of something that isn't so about production puts 
you in a position where you can no more see straight about 
distribution than you can forecast the behavior of a kaleido- 
scope. When it is called on to the limit of its liabilities, your 
traditional capitalistic philosophy has no consistent way of 
denying that legal holders of property deserve a share of cur- 
rent earnings, whether they help along the work that creates 
the earnings or not. I will not match that stupidity by a 
sweeping denial that landlords and capitalists deserve a share 
of the world's earnings. That would be as silly as the mis- 
take it is up to us to correct. I am not going to enter a so- 
cialistic extreme in competition with the capitalistic extreme, 
and of course, whether I have a saner mean or not, we haven't 
time to argue the matter through to a demonstration. I want 
at least to get one proposition clearly before your mind. It 
is this : — Instead of resting on unquestionable facts, another 
angle of modern business principles has for its sole logical 
support a perfectly juvenile fiction. You oppose to the claims 
of laborers in distribution of surplus the preferred claims of 
landlord and capitalist. Now, to be perfectly literal, and neg- 
lecting the landlord factor for the sake of simplicity, the 
reasoning which business theory takes for granted, — and I 
will give it credit in this digest for more than it deserves — 
amounts to this : — first, there is a distinctly defined function 
for the capitalist in the industrial process ; second, the capital- 
ist always performs that function ; therefore, the capitalist is 
always entitled to any surplus that remains after covering the 
cost of production." 

"Don't let it stop the good work, Mr. Graham," Lyon en- 
couraged, with an expression suggestive of a water-poloist com- 
ing to the surface after a submerged scrimmage. "I want to 
express my gratitude, however, while I have a chance, for a 
few words that I can understand without a libretto." 

352 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



"Thanks for the remittance, which we have duly entered in 
our books/' acknowledged Graham, neither swerving from his 
course nor crumpling his serenity. "If I do not run short 
of the same pellucid parts of speech, I may make myself still 
further understood. I wanted to submit for your considera- 
tion a parallel case. For instance, we all agree that a trader is 
presumably a useful member of society. Does that major 
premise take away your right to refuse payment of a bill pre- 
sented by a particular trader, until you have checked up the 
items to see whether he has delivered the goods ? What I am 
getting at is this : — There are normal and necessary functions 
of management in connection with land and capital; and a 
corresponding return is due to landlord and capitalist who 
perform the functions. Our laws of property, however, make 
it possible for many people to be in the landlord or capi- 
talist class, while they evade the functions normally per- 
formed by the class; yet they collect the emoluments due to 
the functions, and many of them a great deal more. This is 
where I over-credited your fundamental reasoning. In order 
to get your capitalistic premises adopted at all, something of 
the functional idea had to be in them at the start, and it is 
always smuggled back into them when they are brought to 
book. In its workings, however, your metaphysics, both of 
production and of distribution, assigns the emolument to the 
status of landlord or capitalist, not less than the functions. 
It follows that you are helpless to show sound reasons why 
not, when directors vote to themselves and their stockhold- 
ing pals a return that is all out of proportion to their services ; 
or when a worthless son of an industrious father becomes a 
riotous spender of the income his father's capital fur- 
nishes; or when his weak-headed daughter takes the income 
to Europe and invests it in experimental husbands. A theory 
of economic distribution which assigns an income to landlord 
or capitalist for any other reason than that which assigns a 
wage to the manual laborer — namely, that each after his kind 
is expected to be a useful worker, and when he meets the ex- 
pectation is entitled simply to the fair wage of his work — is 
not merely a rape of justice, but an insult to ordinary in- 
telligence." 

In this instance it was not so much his usual feeling that 
the unrepresented interest needed protection, which disturbed 

353 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



Lyon's passive attitude, as it was the patience of assured 
strength deciding itself no longer a virtue. Lyon did not 
reckon himself anywhere near admission that the whole tra- 
ditional substructure of business was as flimsy as Graham rep- 
resented. It was not as true of him as of his father that busi- 
ness seemed as self-affirmative as the tides or the seasons. The 
difference, however, was merely in degree ; and Logan unsus- 
pectingly accepted this self-sufficiency of business as confirm- 
ing the theories by which business had been explained. The 
instability of his position was in precisely this relation. Un- 
der close scrutiny it turns out that the one arc of this vicious 
circle has no necessary connection with the other arc. Lyon 
had not found this out. He was like the hearties who had 
sailed the Mediterranean in the good old times when Jerusa- 
lem was the centre of the world, and its outer edge was the sky 
line beyond the Pillars of Hercules. So long as that was the 
radius of their world, the theory was good enough for them, 
and they wasted no time prying underneath it. Simply be- 
cause he had never had the conceit up for examination, but 
had given it storage room along with other souvenirs of his 
college days, Lyon was as unafraid as the hosts appealing to 
Baal, when he called up, as he supposed, a fact which would 
put an end to this whole trifling with the unchangeable : — 

"How would it do, Mr. Graham," he demanded, in a man- 
ner which was meant and understood as mandatory, in spite 
of its studied politeness, "to consider some of the things that 
we all know are here to stay, instead of harping any longer on 
aspects of the case which you claim to regard as debatable? 
For instance, we might progress if we started with the fact 
that nothing can rob the capitalist of the merit of his ab- 
staining from consumption of his wealth, or of his title to the 
reward due for reserving the wealth as capital." 

"Last stowaway aboard! Cast off your stern line!" jeered 
Graham with a burst of glee that was schoolboyish on the sur- 
face, but sufficiently drastic in effect. "Perhaps you haven't 
been noticing how I was rattling the pennies in my pocket 
while I was looking for that perennial 'pity-the-poor-blind- 
man' to turn up? 'Productivity' and ' Abstinence !' The 
Angel Twins of Capitalism ! Whose soul is so congealed as 
not to be stirred to its depths by the privations of Avery stock- 
holders, eating their frugal bread without butter, and their 
potatoes without salt, so as to have the means of taking up 

354 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



their ground-floor apportionment of the next 'good thing!' 
If it would not make a too appalling exhibit, we might reckon 
in the game suppers they pass every now and then, when they 
can't Turkish-bathe away in time the effects of the one before. 
It is enough to draw scalding tears from the painted eyes of 
the wooden Indians in all the back counties !" And Graham 
raised a cheer that must have made the people outside won- 
der ; as no drinks had been ordered. 

"Mr. Lyon," moderated Graham, but with no less accusa- 
tive sarcasm in his inflections, "that 'abstinence' gag is the 
most give-away specimen in the entire collection of capitalistic 
antiquities. It shows up your whole speculation of making- 
wheelbarrow propositions cover aeroplane processes. When it 
was a question between wearing the old shoes another season, 
and getting a new saw to use in the shop ; or between short ra- 
tions through the Winter and seed to plant in the Spring, ab- 
stinence meant something large in the industrial process. But 
do you want me to believe that, since you stopped swallow- 
ing things as they were told, you are still taken in by the sanc- 
timonious pretensions of 'abstinence' as a metaphysic of mod- 
ern distribution? Couldn't you just as easily believe that 
Atlas carries the world on his shoulders, as that 'abstinence,' 
in the sense of self-denial, cuts any considerable figure in the 
case of large capital and modern capitalists? You know as 
well as I do that there would be no capitalistic problem if the 
only capital concerned were the kind that exists by grace of 
the self-sacrifice of its present holders. When you assume the 
contrary, your special pleading for capitalism makes a good 
pair with the Henry George argument that, because savages 
get their food without capital, therefore capital is not neces- 
sary for civilization. The capital that makes the problems is 
not the tool capital that its owners deny themselves necessities 
and luxuries to get; it is the finance-capital that its owners 
couldn't consume if they would — the surplus above all possible 
capacity of its individual possessors to use in any way except 
to procure them unwarranted power over their fellow men. 
Crediting anything to such capital on the score of abstinence 
is as far-fetched as defending winnings in a poker game and 
with marked cards at that, on the ground that they were 
earned by abstinence from work. If we were talking about 
constructive financiering, that hunts out unworked resources, 
and then gets together the capital necessary to develop them, I 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



might go as high as you would in appraising the wage-earning 
value of that service. But for God's sake kick that canting 
hypocrite 'Abstinence' out of decent company, and give things 
their honest names ! The place to discover the self-contradic- 
tion of capitalism is with those capitalists who have to lie 
awake nights to think out ways of anchoring their capital so 
it won't drift away with the next tide. Stretching your meta- 
physic to cover them is like calling it 'abstinence' when the 
boy hanging around the rear of the grocery doesn't walk away 
with a hogshead of molasses in his stomach !" 

In the evolution of social species, the variety next beyond 
the inquirer by curious argumentation is the inquirer by in- 
ventive experiment. If Lyon's attention had been trained in- 
ward instead of outward during Graham's latest iconoclasm, 
he might have observed beginnings of revaluations which, if 
let alone, could have no other outcome than development of 
the more advanced type. Not that Graham had said any- 
thing new. Although in recent years Lyon had given hardly 
more thought to this second link in the chain of Graham's 
reasoning than to the one before ; and although he could not 
have told where he had come across similar opinions ; there 
was, on the one hand, the staleness about them of lessons 
learned but not assimilated, then forgotten and recalled. On 
the other hand, the personal force and assurance that Graham 
put into his destructive criticism was irrefutable. If it did 
not carry conviction, it destroyed the self-evidence of the pre- 
vious basis of belief. 

Lyon could not remember whether he had heard his father's 
comparison of business principles with the laws of climate, 
before it was so unsuccessfully tried on Hester. He would 
have said, however, that the parallel was fairly close. All 
the schemes or longings for social readjustment which he had 
ever thought worth notice, even as academic propositions, 
were to his mind as though they took the facts of climate for 
granted, but deliberately undertook the task of artificially 
controlling climate. The possibility had never before pre- 
sented itself to his imagination that the business system might 
be more like a conservatory than like climate. Contact with 
a man who had been a brilliant success in business on a large 
scale, who nevertheless believed that the principles on which 
the conservatory had been run were not only ridiculous but 

356 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE FALLACY OF DISTRIBUTION 



contemptible, supplied a new object-glass which rearranged 
his whole field of vision. 

Since he was facing the argument, rather than his own 
subjective reactions, Lyon had no thoughts for effects upon 
his personal make-up, but only for the strategic value of Gra- 
ham's moves. He had never allowed himself the false security 
of underrating an opponent's strength. He was too judicial 
to coddle himself with pretense that his position had improved 
during the engagement. In stark truth, he felt as though he 
had been guilty, as he never had been in reality, of 
going into court with a superficially prepared case, and had 
found himself confronted by rules of law which he had never 
considered. 

If Lyon had followed the impulse of the moment, he would 
have announced himself on the spot a volunteer to test Gra- 
ham's allegations, and to devise remedies for the conditions, 
if the charges were sustained. But he was a part of the system. 
He was retained in its interest. It was his business to repre- 
sent its claims. He had not even Kissinger's freedom to re- 
sign his position. Filial duty held him tighter than profes- 
sional obligations. The only immediate recourse was stout 
assertion of mot proven,' with reserve purpose of going into 
Graham's attack at once in detail, to discover whether any- 
thing in his theory really demanded practical recognition. 



357 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 

XXII 

THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 

"Everything fair and reasonable in property would be 
affirmed and strengthened if it were readjusted on the 
service basis." 



GRAHAM had no means of choosing between the possible 
explanations of Lyon's failure to strike back. It might 
be a confession. It might be sheer inability to see things ex- 
cept through the capitalistic prejudice. It might be retreat 
into unthinking defiance. With nothing to go by in decid- 
ing what state of mind to infer, the wisest course was return 
to the pure logic of the case. There was no doubt that Lyon's 
attention was still pacing its beat ; and Graham took the chance 
of forcing his position by massing his attack on the centre. 

After the silence had lasted long enough to afford each 
party a fairly clear retrospect of the ground covered by the 
discussion, and for each to cast up his account of the other's 
offensive and defensive strength, as revealed to the kind of 
muscular sense called into action by the encounter, Graham 
started again in a tone which retained no trace of his previous 
heat. 

"One of the things that men of your type are never able to 
shut out of their minds, Mr. Lyon, when any one questions 
the metaphysics of our economic system, is the ghost of the 
bill which the questioner is supposed to be carrying around 
in his pocket, ready for railroading through the legislature 
the minute his clique gets the balance of power, and tooted as 
an instantaneous cure for everything which the questioner 
calls bad. You can't or you won't separate the question of 
principle from the problems of policy. When I say that the 
property basis of economic distribution is a burlesque of jus- 
tice, and that the only sure approach to distributive justice 
will have to be on a service basis, you refuse to give the propo- 
sition a hearing, because you suppose I have a scheme up my 
sleeve to dispossess property holders and distribute the loot 
to the public per capita. Or rather, you don't suppose any- 
thing of the sort, but you dodge the responsibility _ of run- 
ning down a fundamental proposition, by pretending that 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



every one who sees through your mythological metaphysics 
is in the crazy class. 

"If we should compare notes all along the line, I fancy it 
would turn out that I have quite as radical contempt as you 
have for scoldings at things that serve a necessary purpose in 
the course of evolution, and are bad only when they are set 
up as finalities to block further evolution. I don't want the 
savings banks to stop paying interest — partly because their 
deposits come about as near as anything in our day to the 
fabulous conception of capital that deserves a reward for its 
own sake — and I don't need to be told that the savings banks 
couldn't pay interest unless investments yielded profits. Be- 
sides that, the savings banks do a big service, on the one hand, 
in bunching small sums for use in large enterprises, and on 
the other hand, the interest on deposits provisionally takes 
the place of the deferred payments which will endow the old- 
age of all the industrious, when we have learned to apply the 
insurance principle for all it is worth. With different de- 
tails, all legitimate uses of capital, and payments of dividends, 
are justified in a way, and to a certain limit, which I will not 
discuss, by the value of their service in putting savings at 
the disposal of productive workers, and in proxying partially 
for the old age insurance that will provide for the non-pro- 
ductive years of all the world's workers when we have ration- 
ally developed our economic system. 

"While the regular workings of solid business do not con- 
firm the grotesque theories that have been fabricated to jus- 
tify them, they have a much better reason for existence in the 
literal fact that they are the best approach we have thus far 
been able to make to an ordering of industry in accordance 
with the actual values involved. This does not remove the 
other fact that it is up to us to recognize the snap-judgments 
incorporated in our capitalistic institutions, with the intolera- 
ble consequences that appear as incorporated capital increases 
in amount; and to put less mischievous judgments in their 
place. 

"Everything fair and reasonable in property would be af- 
firmed and strengthened if it were readjusted on the service 
basis. Everything obstructive and abusive and perversive in 
property is protected and instigated by the satanic negation 
of humanity in our capitalistic mythology. Day and night, 
and change of seasons, and advance of civilization didn't stop 

362 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



when we found out that it was the earth that revolved, not 
the sun. We have understood things better, and managed 
ourselves more successfully, since we have reckoned with the 
facts as they are, instead of trying to fit ourselves to fictions. 
Business won't stop, and justice won't disappear, and human 
progress won't halt, when we retire the sardonic old lies I 
have been talking about — that capital produces, and finan- 
ciering manipulation is abstinence, and having some wealth 
confers an inherent right to more. I would willingly quit 
fighting capitalism for life if I could get the fundamental 
concession that business theory shall henceforth be shifted 
over from the property basis to the service basis. I don't 
pretend to see very far ahead as to how the accounting will 
work out, and it would be foolish to try. Coming generations 
will have to develop the details, just as we are only getting 
fairly settled down now to the job of finding out what political 
democracy actually involves, although the eighteenth century 
substituted the principle of government by the people for the 
principle of government over the people. The details will 
take care of themselves, and I am not so very much con- 
cerned about the how or the when of them. They will get 
into shape as fast as men are fit for them, if we only carry 
through the fundamental revolution from mystification into 
matter-of-fact in our conceptions of the primary economic re- 
lations. Whether it comes soon or late, the world will be in 
its next great era of human achievement the moment there 
is a working majority for calculating our economic course ac- 
cording to the human factors in the process, instead of blund- 
ering along further in this capitalistic trance. 

"You think this is an infinitesimal issue to start a strike on, 
Mr. Lyon. I am trying to show you, on the contrary, that it 
is an issue that goes to the roots of modern men's connections 
with one another. When men see the facts as they are, they 
are not long in perceiving that the logic of events is rapidly 
forcing choice between two alternatives. One or the other is 
inevitable. We may go on in an endless series of trials of 
strength between economic classes, with decision of nothing 
except survival of the type that the system makes strong ; or 
we may appeal to elementary principles of the human proc- 
ess, and reorder the system so that fitter types will be the 
strong, and will survive to fill the world with a better process. 
This strike means that a social will which may be only a cloud 

363 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



as big as a man's hand on the world's horizon — but none of us 
have taken its measure yet — has made itself up for the forward 
end of this dilemma." 

The two men were leaning so far over the little table be- 
tween them that their faces nearly met. They were looking 
each other fixedly in the eye, and there was no more energy in 
Graham's assault than in Lyon's repellant resistence. 

Perhaps it was well that Graham did not know how far 
Lyon had convinced himself before the argument began. He 
might have scattered his fire if he had suspected how many 
of the things he was saying affected Lyon like graphophon- 
ings of mind readings from his own off-duty reflections. In 
fact, Lyon had to keep his will power at high pressure to hold 
the business side of the interview foremost. By vigilant use 
of force, he centered his interest on the strike issues trembling 
in the balance, and possibly to be settled one way or the other 
by some slight turn of the talk. The prospect of arriving at 
anything practical, however, seemed so remote that it was 
hard to resist the allurements of the argument as a purely 
speculative exercise. In that light his sympathies would have 
led him so far from his professional position that Graham 
would have been at a loss to place him. In fact, although it 
was not yet quite clear to Lyon himself, his business ideals 
were not so very different from Graham's. For Lyon, how- 
ever, these ideals belonged in a detached realm of the mind. 
They had a coherence and a desirability of their own as ab- 
stractions. He still considered it visionary to suppose that 
working connections could ever be established between them 
and actual affairs. 

If Graham had been able to ferret out so much, it would 
probably have decoyed him into the tactical mistake of mov- 
ing directly on Lyon's will, instead of continuing preliminary 
operations on his ideas. His confinement to surface indica- 
tions for clues to Lyon's state of mind imposed persistence 
along the line of logical and psychological rudiments; while 
a little more knowledge would have stimulated efforts which 
would have been strategically far less effective. 

"Just one more fling at this distribution matter," Graham 
indexed, with a breezy sort of suggestiveness that he had so 
far merely been getting bothersome trifles out of the way, 
"and then I'll come to something a little nearer home. 

364 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



"I don't want to reopen the productivity question, but of 
course it has to be the background of our ideas about distri- 
bution. And after what I have said, it would be dishonest to 
accuse me of promoting a scheme that would put one man's 
dues into other men's pockets. I am trying to show you that 
we have such a scheme in operation now. It is backed by 
solemn codes of owl-eyed law and philosophy. I am after a 
scheme that will get each man's dues into his own pocket, 
and that daylight law and philosophy can stand for. In the 
system of distribution that the realities of life will finally 
sanction, everybody that contributes to the values of life will 
get a share, and for the good and sufficient reason that he 
contributes to those values. If any one gets a share who does 
not so contribute, it will be either because the social scheme 
has broken down enough, at the point where he occurs, to be 
defenseless against his brand of thieving, or because he comes 
in on some minor qualifying clause that needn't embarrass 
the main argument. You have no fear coming that any- 
body, from the bank president and the captain of industry 
down to the scrub woman, will be thrown out of any job that 
really contributes to the values of life, or will lose the pay that 
belongs with the job. But our present theory of distribution 
is an unmixable fluid, made up of unequal and variable parts 
of the oil of wages and the water of bonuses. The process of 
squeezing out the water that is going on in the world of practi- 
cal finance, has also got to go on in the theories behind the 
finance. When the process is complete, nobody that helps the 
world along will be short of his equity in the process. Only 
the polite hangers-on will find that they've either got to starve 
or go to work. 

"To change the figure, our present scheme of distribution 
is trying to support itself with one foot on the ground and the 
other in the clouds. When it gets planted with both feet 
where sole leather can get a purchase, the procession will be 
less picturesque, but it will be an ablerbodied column, with a 
much reduced percentage to be accounted for by the hospital 
service and the missing list. 

"Libraries have been written in the forlorn hope of work- 
ing off on the rank and file of us any old thing except unadul- 
terated truth about distribution. The facts always get there 
in the end. I can't silence all the libraries in this skirmish. 
I can only show you the location of my main batteries. The 

365 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



key to this particular part of the situation is that property is 
privilege. Sounds like diluted Proudhon, doesn't it? 'Twould 
save lots of trouble if I could leave you the satisfaction of 
damning it with that label ; but truth compels me to bar such 
short cuts by adding that property is one of the privileges that 
make life worth living. 'Maintain property' is writ large be- 
tween the lines of the Ten Commandments, and it is not much 
less rudimentary than the best of them. 

"On the other hand, property is a sort of privilege that can 
be saved from abuse only when it is controlled by infallible 
moral perceptions; and they are the factors in the case that 
the game keepers of property have been sedulously stirpicul- 
turing out of our intellects for more than a hundred years. 

"If I had a dollar, and I lived in a society that did not main- 
tain property, instead of having my hands free to work for 
another dollar, it might cost more strength and worry to keep 
the first one than it took to get it. Property is the privilege 
of falling back on our neighbors' help to defend us in pos- 
session of what rightfully belongs to us. When all of us see 
that the only way to keep all of our hands untied for prof- 
itable work is to stand by one another in guarding what our 
work has gained, each of us has the benefit of a privilege that 
is equivalent to the work of a big machine added to our feeble 
labor power. When my neighbors pledge themselves to guard 
my dollar, they are my servants, and I may put in my whole 
strength getting another dollar, or I may do what I please 
till I need my dollar. 

"But capitalism has actually made us believe that, instead 
of owing my neighbors something for their protectorate over 
my dollar, they are bound to pay me something for allowing 
them to act as my private watchmen ! I would rather lounge 
in the shade than hoe corn; so I turn over the hoe, that I 
have bought with my dollar, to my neighbor Jones. All my 
neighbors go on his bond as surety for the hoe, and he be- 
comes the agent of my neighbors in guarding the hoe. When 
the season is over, if he doesn't do it of his own will, my neigh- 
bors close in on him with their property laws and make him 
return not only the dollar which I put into the hoe, but ten 
cents more to compensate me for doing my work. In other 
words, our capitalistic system is the great original Tom Saw- 
yer getting his fence whitewashed !" 

366 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



Lyon was reminded of Hester's similar way of putting it 
the previous Sunday, and he wondered whether she had been 
working on a clue from Graham. This seemed to him, how- 
ever, a far more extravagant caricature of the real transaction, 
than hers; but he merely interrupted dryly, "While you were 
about it, Mr. Graham, couldn't you also have barred the short 
cut from the sublime to the ridiculous?" 

Graham reacted instinctively. He dramatically advanced 
to the higher emphasis of reducing the physical elements of 
speech to almost inaudible suggestion. 

"The span from the sublime to the ridiculous in the case, 
Mr. Lyon, is precisely the one dimension of the chasm that 
capitalism has channeled in modern society. This strike is a 
preliminary survey for the engineering; feat of closing the 
crevasse. The only desperate element in the situation is the 
fatuity of capitalism in reversing the identities of the ridicu- 
lous and the sublime. The most stupendous deception ever 
lodged in the minds of men is the uncontrollable element in 
capitalism's disrupting force. It is the incredible hallucina- 
tion that absentee ownership can entitle a man to levy tribute 
on the f ellowman who stays by the stuff and makes it useful for 
human purposes. The reality of this moral upsetting has been 
hid from the wise and prudent but it is dawning on babes. 
Capitalism and its intellectual panders refuse to see it; but 
all that is human in men is beginning to feel it ; and install- 
ing the truth in place of this cynical perversion is going to be 
the work of the next great era." 

The three men were equally affected by this compression of 
a crisis into a breath. The words had been put into Gra- 
ham's mouth, and another age might have told the story as 
a speaking of the supernatural. In the form dictated by the 
circumstances, the perception which had been guiding him 
for years was almost as revealing. to Graham as to Lyon and 
Halleck. The judgment of neither was at once changed by 
it. On the contrary, its first effect on each was to confirm 
him in the position he was trying to maintain. Sharpness of 
outline, if not depth of insight, had been added to the view of 
each. The time needed for the back-spring from the strain 
of the moment was filled with readjustment of vision to the 
altered outlook. 

When Graham spoke again, it was in the emotionless and 
decisive tone of ordinary office affairs. "Our whole wise- 

3 67 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



acrely last-century literature on the calculus of capitalistic in- 
comes is as sophistical from the start as if it had been dis- 
quisitions to prove the moral harmonies' of winnings from 
loaded dice. Our business routine conceals this vitiating ele- 
ment in our economic system in the mass of details that are 
entirely rational. When I pay six cents for the dollar I bor- 
row at the cashier's window, the service the bank does me is 
in so many ways like the service of the grocer who sells me a 
dollar's worth of sugar, that it would be wanting something 
for nothing if I quarreled with paying a profit to either. If 
we were all attending strictly to fair exchange of services with 
our fellow men, and had no ways of collecting for services 
not rendered, there would be as little to go on in fighting the 
profits in the one case as in the other. The six cents which I 
pay to the banker under the name 'interest,' total up mostly 
from items that would have to be covered in any solvent sys- 
tem of doing business that could ever be invented. First is 
the fair wage to the banker for his labor. Then there are all 
the necessary expenses of doing the business of keeping money 
in stock for the use of workers who haven't it in stock. Then, 
besides other items, there is insurance on the risk the banker 
takes of not getting his money back, in spite of the big secur- 
ity system which business and law maintain. I am quite will- 
ing to admit that the six cents I pay for a particular dollar 
may be no more than enough to cover all these items in that 
transaction. What I am pointing out is that our capitalistic 
theory permits and encourages the loading of that interest 
charge with an unearned bonus to the owner of the money, 
simply and solely because he is the owner. More than this, 
the ways of collecting this charge, and others that look like 
it but are really raised counterfeits of it, are so many and so 
complicated, that the banker's fair compensation may be 
exceeded over and over again, by levies which property is able 
to make on production, on account of the fictitious merits 
which the capitalistic metaphysics credits to capital. Wage 
and cost of the service are the only proper fixed charges for 
economic goods, whether supplied by landlord, capitalist, 
manager or laborer. Capitalistic inflation of the rent, inter- 
est, profit, and salary elements of distribution, in excess of 
the price necessary to cover these charges, is the only an- 
archism which modern society has seriously to fear. There 
is no compensating social function to which this graft cor- 

368 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



responds. Capitalism standing by Have in forcing hold-up 
money from Have-not, is the most misanthropic enemy left 
in the path of socialization." 

In spite of the extensions which the talk was giving to his 
abstract theory, the unavailable quality of these refinements 
loomed up to Lyon at this moment more than ever. He was 
not disingenuous, but merely practical, when he again ap- 
pealed from speculation to common sense in the unshaken ulti- 
matum: — "Well now, Mr. Graham, bring this thing right 
down to application. Honestly, supposing every capitalist in 
the world should paste your proposition in his hat, and on his 
office door, tomorrow morning. What earthly chance is there 
that swapping one metaphysic for another could make the 
slightest impression on the ways in which we've always got 
to do business?" 

"That is the very least of my troubles," was Graham's quick 
rejoinder; and something in his manner forbade suspicion 
that he was either disregarding facts or falsifying their indi- 
cations. The curl of his lip showed that he had discounted 
Lyon's sort of incredulity ; but his words showed plainer that 
he was not deluding himself about the lapse of time to be 
reckoned with before dividends could be expected from in- 
vestments in moral principle. "So far as I know, it has been 
rather the rule than the exception for the social principles 
that we now regard as settled to drag out a period that looked 
like still-birth, after the date which History selects as mark- 
ing their accession. The case of English constitutionalism is 
the whole thing in a nutshell. In outward appearance things 
went on in pretty much the same old way for two or three 
hundred years after Runnymede; yet the historians tell us 
that Magna Charta marks the great divide between the regime 
of kings over the law and kings under the law. To the dis- 
passionate observer at our distance nothing worth getting 
very excited about, one way or the other, seems to be involved 
in letting the word 'Autocrat' stand in the Russian constitu- 
tion or in running a pen through it. But the Douma knows, 
and the Czar knows, and the Czarocrats know that a constitu- 
tion with the word 'Autocrat' left out would be the Magna 
Charta of Russian liberties. Neither the unsocial spirit nor 
the social machinery of capitalism would disappear if we 
should serve notice tomorrow that capital's term of office had 
expired, and that human interests would henceforth admin- 

369 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



ister economic and political affairs. Suppose nobody in our 
day cashed in anything on the readjustment. Suppose peo- 
ple would have to wait for returns as long as they did after 
Magna Charta or the Cross. Do you want seriously to set up 
the contention, Mr. Lyon, that it is not worth bothering about 
whether a subversive principle or its opposite sets the pace for 
the society we belong to?" 

The prospects along this line did not flatter Lyon, and he 
shifted to another question. "Has one of these great moral 
principles ever been known to ride into power on the back 
of such attenuated esoteric abstractions as we have been dis- 
cussing?' 7 

"Don't deceive yourself on that score either, Mr. Lyon," 
countered Graham instantly. "The minutes contain no rec- 
ord of anything passing from mouth to mouth faster or far- 
ther since the world began, than knowledge of the miswork- 
ings of capitalism among the plain people. They don't have 
to twist their minds around theorists' ways of telling it. They 
know the facts; and their instincts are growing truer every 
day about the sort of leadership that fits the facts. It isn't a 
question any longer whether the majority can be roused 
against capitalism. The question is how to keep them from 
being too much aroused, and by the wrong people. The 
straight line has never been the path of society on any long 
route, and it wouldn't pay to waste regrets over the unlikeli- 
hood of an exception in progress from capitalism to hu- 
manism. The costs of all kinds will be kept down though, 
and the readjustment will get into running order with least 
loss of time, the sooner men whom capitalism has trained to 
manage large affairs sign up with the policy of the future and 
give it their loyal service. 

"But before I get to that," outlined Graham, "I have one 
more specification in the case against capitalism. It is con- 
nected in a way with the two chief counts that I have argued, 
but it goes on its own merits, and does not stand or fall with 
the others. In a word, a programme of economic distribu- 
tion in which capitalistic interests decide contested claims be- 
tween themselves and service interests, may be tolerated as a 
transition expedient. As a principle and a system it is 
damnable. 

"The world's wage-earners are today in the situation a 
farmer would be in if a manufacturer of farm implements 

370 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE SUPERSTITION OF PROPERTY 



had the legal right to decide how much of the annual crop 
should be invested in his goods. The interest of the farmer 
is to invest his surplus so as to do the most for the comfort 
and happiness of his family. The interest of the manufac- 
turer is to get as much as possible of the crop as dividends on 
his capital. If the farmer is free to act for his own interests, 
he may make foolish investments, but in the end he will 
probably look out for his family better than he would if the 
manufacturer were free to make him turn his whole surplus 
into machinery, regardless of the comfort of his family. The 
advantage of capital in the capitalistic system tends to become 
a strangle-hold of the something-for-nothing parties in dis- 
tribution, upon all the other claimants to a share in the out- 
put." 



371 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



XXIII 

THE DOVE OF PEACE 

"Each in his way was suffering for peace. Neither could 
quite believe that the apparently unattainable was within 
such easy grasp. Each feared to trust his own senses 
that he was not being played upon by some spiteful 
illusion." 

IN spite of his previous qualifications, Graham seemed to 
have exposed a weakness at last, and Lyon was on him like 
a ferret : — "Do you mean that the men who hustle around and 
find new places to use capital, and make plans so that the in- 
vestment will be secure, and give the people with a hundred 
dollars apiece a chance to put their money where it will be 
both safe and profitable, and carry on the business so that it 
will yield returns — do you mean to say that such men as that 
deserve nothing for their work?" 

"That is precisely the reverse of what I mean to say, and 
already have said," assured Graham ; and although he could 
not see how Lyon found any such implication in his latest 
remark, he was glad to be called on for the repetition. "In 
the freest and justest society I can imagine, there would be a 
constant demand, with good pay, for just that type of men. 
More than that, they would have a fair chance to bargain 
with the promoter, so that his work would not get more than 
its fair wage at their expense. But one of the things to be pro- 
vided for, before financier or organizer is settled in his place, 
must be that all their fellow workers shall collect the full 
worth of their work ; so that they, and not somebody else, shall 
have the decision whether surplus shall be capitalized at all, 
or consumed in raising their standard of life ; and if it is to 
be capitalized, the producers of it must be consulted about in- 
vestments to be made with their own surplus. Every man that 
joins in making nature productive, or people happy, whether 
he hoes cotton, or assembles capital or composes music, de- 
serves his pay for his work. But that is all wage. It isn't in- 
terest nor profits in the capitalistic sense. And I am not pre- 
tending to lay down a rule about the scale of wages, as be- 
tween the man with the hoe and the man with the hoard. I 

375 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



am denouncing a system of book-keeping that credits to in- 
come what belongs to expense. As to a scale of incomes, I 
would venture the guess that from a thousand dollars a year 
up to the salary of the President of the United States would 
fairly represent the range between the service value of the 
man that might be taken as the labor unit, and that of the 
most efficient man in the process. 

a But the main point is, who shall put the valuation on the 
different kinds of work? Under our system, within certain 
limits, of course, capital can fix its own wage and that of labor 
too ; besides having the power to distribute hand-outs by the 
million that are not wage but rake-off. In a fairly rational 
system all the people who did the work would be represented 
in deciding how the product should be distributed." 

"That means," investigated Lyon, "you would give every- 
body a chance to vote himself a share of the capital of the 
world?" 

"In effect, yes," promptly assented Graham. 

"In other words, you would cure what you call 'capitalism' 
by inoculating everybody with the disease?" 

"If the world couldn't produce more than two or three 
drops of alcohol per capita," Graham conceded cheerfully, "I 
suppose its pro rata consumption as flavoring extract might 
abolish alcoholism ! But seriously, you can't afford to throw 
dust in the air by jumbling the distinction I've been making 
all along between capital and capitalism. You can't make it 
too strong for me that civilized men need capital as much as 
they need land. Capital in itself, and humanly used, is an 
unmixed good. Capitalism is an inhuman use of capital. 
Capitalism has turned capital into a gigantic beast of prey 
that grows by what it feeds on ; while the actual workers have 
to go without the food it consumes." 

In spite of his interest in the speculative side of the argu- 
ment, Lyon's impatience was again asserting itself. He was 
summing up the lack of practical proposals in Graham's talk, 
as confirmation of the Company's ultimatum that theories are 
not to be taken seriously till a practicable way of applying 
them is invented. He thought it was time to bring up his an- 
nounced reliance for defense. "But you have had a free 
hand all the evening, Mr. Graham, to conduct the case in your 
own way, and you haven't come down near enough for your 
drag ropes to touch the earth with anything that had the re- 

376 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



motest resemblance to a practical proposition. Don't you 
know that you haven't come within striking distance of my 
original position that your whole case is air-castles and not 
business?" 

Quite as disconcerting to Lyon as the substance of Gra- 
ham's argument, was just the faintest trace of conscious and 
playful superiority in his way of handling the opposition. 
Instead of appearing surprised or baffled, he received every- 
thing which he took as strictly candid on Lyon's part with 
the patronizing confidence of the kindly pedagogue who puts 
himself in his pupils' place, and gauges his answers to the 
liberal reflection, "Those things puzzled me too at their stage 
of my education." Not even this latest challenge turned Gra- 
ham from his general plan, which he had varied only in de- 
tail. His answer, therefore, again seemed at first evasive: — 

"If I asked the Avery Company to throw all its power-gen- 
erators into the junk-heap, and buy substitutes of my make, 
wouldn't it first order its experts to spend all the time neces- 
sary testing the principles on which my generator was con- 
structed? The fundamental question would be whether I 
had exploited some mechanical fallacy, or had found a new 
application of physical laws. 

"Now let me tell you one or two facts, Mr. Lyon. These 
are not theorizings. They are things I know, although no one 
has the means yet of stating them with numerical exactness. 

"In the first place, there never has been a great constructive 
era in the world, a time when men pooled their forces, and 
moved things, and changed things, that did not get a part of 
its power from some sort of common faith. It might not have 
been in logical form in the minds of many men, but it made 
many men feel alike, and hope alike, and look in the same 
direction, and march in the line of their outlook. 

"In the second place, since the era of household industries 
closed, and capitalistic industry began, many things have 
combined to queer men's fundamental faiths. The men with 
overgrown genius for accumulation have developed a tech- 
nique, and their Boswells have lackeyed together a theory to 
match, which would beautifully account for everything if the 
world were nothing but a big quartz-mill, and the majority 
fulfilled their destiny by running it, while a few made off 
with the product. The rest of mankind have been in a sort 

377 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



of daze, from which here and there groups have emerged with 
a faith more or less frantically advertised to carry in itself the 
regeneration of things; but on the whole the quartz-mill 
theory and practice have been the only consistent ground 
gainers. 

"In the third place, a faith is diffusing through our genera- 
tion, and is fast winning all but the men who have sold their 
souls to things, that the meaning of life is the survival of 
types that are superior in all 'round values, not merely in 
brute power. It is faith that the world belongs to the workers, 
and in proportion to the merit of their work. It is faith that 
our governments and our businesses, and the one no more nor 
less than the other, are merely machineries to furnish the 
means by which this progress of human types may proceed. 
They are not ends in themselves, entitled to take tribute of 
human sacrifice for their separate satisfaction. They are 
worth what they are worth as valets of men devoted to the 
main pursuit. It is faith that capital, which a pagan faith 
was binding as the cumulative burden of their servitude upon 
most men's shoulders, is to be sanctified as a medium of hu- 
man realization. From the mass of men who have only inar- 
ticulate feelings of this faith, to the few who speak some of 
its simplest words, and here and there the ones who have 
thought it through as a philosophy, it is marshalling modern 
men in a new migration to a promised land. It is a recon- 
structing Weltanschauung, as the Germans say; a way of put- 
ting things together so that they merge into one meaning ; a 
morality of promises in the place of prohibitions; a religion 
that grows out of life and with life, instead of descending upon 
life to stunt it. 

"In the fourth place, the Avery strike is a calmly thought- 
out movement to secure a sample public profession of this 
faith in application to the practice of a big concern. Incredi- 
ble as everybody called it in advance, men and means enough 
have supported this faith to create the situation which exists 
between us today. Everybody called it an utterly impractical 
attempt to make working men fight for a proposition that 
meant nothing tangible to any of them, even if they won out. 
Here we are, however. You have no doubt whether we have 
been fighting and are fighting still. And the thing that we 
are fighting about, as it stands in the mind of the average 
fighter, may be reduced to this: — 'We demand a definite 

378 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



promise to begin the working out of plans to manage capital 
in a democratic way.' " 

"In the fifth place, 'the democratic way' is getting a 
meaning as fertilizing today for economics as it was in the 
eighteenth century for politics. The plain man hasn't a cut 
and dried definition of democracy now, but he knows a lot of 
things that make in its direction, and others that make against 
it, and it is getting harder to fool him about the sort of thing 
that shall have his support. I find the working-man calls it 
the real thing when I tell him that democracy means living 
together in such a way that everybody gets his full share of 
backing from everybody else in doing his best to make the 
most of life ; and in return everybody does all that is in him 
to deserve his neighbor's support. 

"I don't mean to say that many men have thought their 
democratic faith much further into detail; but whenever I 
tell working men what democracy means to me, the response 
I get convinces me that a humaner faith is tugging harder 
at the hearts of more people than any of us imagine. 

"So far as I can sense the meaning of the tide of democracy 
behind this strike, it is a passionate feeling, reaching deep 
below the mental level where it is a reasoned theory, that our 
social agreements have right soon got to make a place for three 
things ; and you needn't look far to find the pressure for each 
of these three things behind every move the strike has made. 

"First, — and at this transition point out of the capitalistic 
aberration into sanity practically most important — is that the 
theories and policies of business shall frankly recognize the 
literal fact of the operative partnership of workers, and shall 
honestly accept the moral consequence of corresponding 
right to partnership in control. I said enough at the start 
about the fact of partnership wherever useful work is going 
on. This reality of partnership is filling the minds of work- 
ers, and it will not rest till it refashions their democracy. The 
fact that every business is an organization of men who are 
necessary to one another on the operative side, foreordains 
sooner or later a regime of partnership in information, part- 
nership in influence, partnership in deciding policies, partner- 
ship in adjusting principles of distribution; an active part- 
nership of every worker in giving spiritual meaning to the 
work ; not merely dumb and menial partnership in physical 
operation. 

379 



U 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



The second thing grades up in importance with the first, 
because it is the most necessary means to that end. Because 
partnership is cooperation in getting a common result; be- 
cause the working partners in business are not cogs but men ; 
the man-to-man relations in the economic process imply com- 
munity of knowledge among the partners about the purposes 
of the process, the policies pursued in promoting the purposes, 
and all the reasons why these policies, and not others, are the 
best. There is no democracy where some of the partners deny 
to other partners information which affects the interests of all. 
Everything which it is right to do in a democracy it is right 
to do in the open. Democracy needs publicity as a disinfec- 
tant. 

"The third thing is merely the last and largest look we can 
get at present at the meaning of democracy. What are we 
driving at? What is our standard of value? What is the last 
test we can apply to human programmes, to decide whether 
they are wise and just or foolish and selfish? 

"This is where it is hardest not to give license to what I 
confess I regard rather literally as my prophetic office. I 
don't apologize to any one for my belief that I've made out 
more reliable landmarks than most men who call themselves 
practical are willing, on week days at any rate, to be suspected 
of laying their course by. The papers have reported me so 
often on this subject, and you have probably kept tab on me 
so closely, that a reading by title is enough for the present. 
The democratic faith is substantially a belief in men as a 
standard of value. It doesn't quarrel with any one who thinks 
he can see beyond human values, provided that his assump- 
tion of larger vision does not in practice depress these nearer 
values. The most worthful things we know are the qualities 
of men, and their reciprocities with one another on the basis 
of a rational scale of valuation of the qualities. The goal of 
democracy is not a point where the human process may be 
supposed to end. It is an illimitable development through 
conditions progressively favorable to the production of the 
highest types and most harmonious assortments of human 
values. Life is worth while, and all the material conditions 
and machineries and organizations of life get their scale of 
importance, just in the ratio that the whole and the parts are 
adjusted to the supreme purpose of realizing the possibilities 

380 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



of persons. Everything intermediate is means. The end of 
life is transformation of all other power into personality. 

"It sounds occult, I admit, and a syllable or two of it at a 
time has to be diluted with much every-day experience to 
make it reveal itself to the man on the street. I'm giving it 
to you in its lowest terms, as an algebraic formula of the vital 
faith that is actually settling itself into position, in the minds 
of this generation, to mould the democracy of the future. It 
may strike you as grotesque, but without stopping to argue it, 
I'm prepared to defend this way of expressing the whole situa- 
tion : — The eighteenth century democracy of 'Liberty, Equal- 
ity, Fraternity' was to the twentieth century democracy of 
'Partnership, Publicity, Personality,' as the boy with the 
penny whistle to the trumpeter of the troop. 

"Now, Mr. Lyon, I'm prepared to answer for the 'upper 
ether and angels' food.' While everybody back of the strike 
has not gone into all this philosophizing of its animus, in 
some shape or other everybody behind the strike has had in 
mind the general drift of what I have been saying; and all 
these shares in the faith of democracy are massing up the 
momentum of the movement. The spirit of the crusade is 
packed into the perfectly specific battle cry, Partnership with- 
out representation is undemocratic. You will have to forget 
your American history to believe that this is too abstract a 
proposition for a popular slogan. We do not pretend to know 
the form or the extent of wage earners' representation that 
will finally prove to be fair. We have merely started with the 
irreducible minimum that the unrepresented haven't a square 
deal. Our demand for an employees' member on the Avery 
Board means simply that our faith in democracy does not 
stop with words; but from this out democracy is prepared to 
get itself realized in more consistent deeds." 

It is seldom easy in the darkness to take it as a sign of dawn. 
Since he last spoke, Lyon had been listening to Graham with 
deepening conflict between sympathy with his ideals and con- 
viction that practical use of them in ending the strike was 
impossible. He wanted to be as candid about one side of the 
case as the other ; but his sense of responsibility held him back, 
and Graham threw in his ultimate appeal. 

"I didn't come here as a bully, Mr. Lyon, and a conference 
like this is no place for threats. You have called on me for 

381 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



the practical side of our theories though, and there hasn't been 
a time since the strike began when the practical side could be 
stated with more confidence than at this moment. Instead 
of being at a loss for means of making our campaign effective, 
fate is taking active operations out of our hands, and fighting 
our battle to a more decisive finish than we want. Next to los- 
ing this fight, the worst thing that could happen to us would 
be for the Avery Company to go to the wall. I can't believe 
you are worse informed than we are about the New Jersey 
scheme. I presume you know at least as well as we do that 
unless you can settle the strike within two weeks the Avery 
Company might as well wind up its affairs." 

Of course Lyon could admit no knowledge of the kind ; and 
instead of meeting the hint directly he put in evidence an- 
other fact, leaving Graham to draw his own inferences, but 
with the feeling that it would show the hopelessness of further 
discussion. "Perhaps the Company's estimate of that factor, 
Mr. Graham, may be inferred from an action of our Board 
this morning. It took a vote in which it more emphatically 
reaffirmed what it had already declared a hundred times, that 
sooner than elect to its membership a man named from the 
outside, it would sell its machinery as scrap iron, and turn the 
plant into a roast peanut emporium. If the strikers are really 
beginning to see that they have some interests in common 
with the Company, and if they believe the situation is as pre- 
carious as you assume, the only rational course is a modifica- 
tion of their demands." 

For an hour Halleck had been scribbling busily on a blot- 
ting pad, while taking in every shading and modulation of 
the talk. He had torn off sheet after sheet and shredded them 
into the waste basket. He had that afternoon found some- 
thing to work on in a pamphlet containing the terms of a 
proposition made by English employers to strikers in the ship- 
yards. The circumstances were so different from those in 
Chicago that Halleck was handicapped almost as much as he 
was stimulated by the proposals. While the gloom was clos- 
ing in on the prospect during the last few minutes, his senses 
seemed to be quickened in the same ratio. He shook off the 
encumbrance, and reduced the ideas he had been struggling 
with to a series of clauses which made a possible meeting 
ground between the two extremes. He read them a second 

382 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



time, then a third, a fourth and a fifth. They conceded so 
much, yet reserved so much ; they left with the company all its 
power, while committing it to a profession of faith and a 
practical policy which affirmed all the principles for which 
the strikers contended ; they did not disturb the company in 
its one absolute refusal, while they granted all that the strik- 
ers had claimed as essential in the meaning of the one impos- 
sible item — all in all they were so balanced, yet so construc- 
tive, that Halleck was obliged to set the brakes on his own 
assurance. He did not see how either party could afford to 
reject the solution; yet it almost passed belief that an adjust- 
ment so simple could end such a mighty conflict. 

He had reached this eager state just as Lyon and Graham 
were dropping into moody contemplation of their nullifying 
result. They had been so centered upon their task that Hal- 
leck was left outside their range of attention. Each had an 
obscure feeling that it was a call to begin life over again, after 
writing off the irreparable, when he reappeared to them with 
the manner of completing the last thing said, instead of in- 
troducing a wholly unexpected innovation. "Listen to this I" 
and he read : — 

Memorandum of a Basis of Agreement 

Between 

the Avery Company and its Employees. 

1. The Company acknowledges the principle that work in its employ 
creates an equity in the business. 

2. Since no more exact way to calculate this equity has been dis- 
covered than the adjustment secured by established business practices, 
the Company holds that the only practical method of giving effect to 
Clause 1, is cooperation between the Company and its employees in dis- 
covering how the operations of the Company may more closely apply 
the aforesaid principle. 

3. To that end the Company agrees to designate a standing com- 
mittee of conference, to act with a similar committee of the employees, 
in taking into consideration all the affairs of the Company, particu- 
larly everything affecting the interests of the employees, and from time 
to time to propose modifications of the general policies of the Company, 
whenever the conferees are able to unite on recommendations which 
in their judgment would tend better to protect all the interests con- 
cerned. 

4. The Company agrees to accept any method, satisfactory to the 
employees, of constituting the membership of the employees' committee; 
provided only that all such members shall be on the pay roll of the 
Company. 

383 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



5. The Company agrees to instruct its committee to cooperate with 
the employees' committee in working out specifications of the kinds of 
information about the affairs of the Company which shall be put at 
the disposal of the committee, together with the rules which shall gov- 
ern access of the committee to this information, and its transmission to 
the body of employees. 

6. The Company agrees in good faith to cooperate with the employees 
in carrying out the spirit of this agreement, by adoption of details 
which experience may from time to time show to be necessary in order 
to give it full effect. 

7. As rapidly as the different departments can employ their full 
force, the Company agrees to restore all its employees to the places 
which they held before the strike. Preference in reinstatement will be 
in accordance with length of previous service. 

8. The Company agrees to put its employees as far as possible in 
possession of the tenements which they occupied before the strike. If 
this is not feasible, the Company will extend its building operations so 
as to provide rents for all employees who desire to occupy the Company 's 
tenements. 

9. The employees agree to return to work as soon as these terms 
have been accepted by the Company and by the strike organization. 

10. The employees agree, upon returning to work, to sign individual 
contracts not to join in a strike against the Company for a term 
of . 

11. The employees agree to join in constituting and controlling an 
employees' committee, as provided for in Clauses 3 and 4, and to make 
that committee their medium of communication with the Company. 

It was so obvious that it was incredible ! Virtually the same 
reaction was in Lyon's mind and in Graham's. "If a thing 
so plausible does not conceal some fatal flaw, how could we 
have kept up this frightful fight so long before finding it out?" 
The detective glances that the three men interchanged were 
both tragic and pathetic. Each in his way was suffering for 
peace. Neither could quite believe that the apparently unat- 
tainable was within such easy grasp. Each feared to trust 
his own senses that he was not being played upon by some 
spiteful illusion. 

After a space of oppressive blankness, Lyon took up the 
inquest: — "Read it again, Halleck, and slow!" 

Halleck spaced off the words, stopping at the end of each 
clause for it to register its total effect. There was no comment 
till he had finished; and the long pause when he was done 
proved that the document at least stood the test as something 
that must be considered. 

Lyon expressed the first opinion: — "If anything can be 
counted on more certainly than a business man's contempt 

384 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



for generalities, it is his suspicion of them. Pocketing a loss 
of almost any definite amount is easier for him than signing his 
name to a blanket clause like the first." 

"But what harm can it do," defended Halleck, "when no 
rights whatever are surrendered by it, except license to re- 
fuse to hear advice?" 

"Of course," Graham submitted, "that first clause is the 
meat of the matter. In form, it isn't what we have fought for. 
In substance it is all we demand. At the same time it leaves 
the Company standing pat on its original refusal, while it 
yields everything that we expected from the thing refused." 

Then the sitting passed into executive session before put- 
ting the memorandum on its final passage. Halleck's word- 
ing was not changed by the inspection, but the three men had 
to face the fact that they were after all not the court of last 
resort. When they had done their work, Graham simply 
recorded his personal decision : — "I am not a Czar. My opin- 
ion will go a good way with our organization, but it may be 
overruled. I promise you, however, gentlemen, that so far 
as my influence goes it shall be exerted in favor of settlement 
on these terms." 

Lyon was equally explicit: "It is needless to say that for 
more than one reason I have no way to affect the action of the 
Company except by advice. I believe it would be on the whole 
an advantage for business if it could put itself on this 
plane. In my judgment it would be perfectly safe and feasi- 
ble for our Company to make this experiment, but I can make 
no predictions about its adoption. I shall advocate it, how- 
ever, to the best of my ability with the directors." 

It was long after midnight when Halleck locked the door 
of the deserted resort behind the fagged debaters. They took 
the same car for a short distance. Graham had hardly taken 
leave at his transfer point when Lyon was aware of a change 
in Halleck. His quicker breathing, his pallor, his evidently 
constrained composure, were symptoms that Lyon had never 
seen in him before. He was alert in an instant. There was 
no one near to listen, but Halleck spoke in a rapid husky 
whisper. "The best service you can do a man sometimes, 
Logan, is to give him a rest from his own troubles by loading 
him with yours. I've put this off too long. Perhaps you and 
the rest of the town know better than I do what came to me 

385 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DOVE OF PEACE 



in full only a few days ago. I have struggled against my 
better judgment, and have hoped to avoid extremes. I wanted 
to rescue my wife from herself, and I wanted to avoid throw- 
ing a feather's weight of my own affairs against my possible 
power to help bring good out of the evil in this labor situation. 
Since Bobbie was born, I have not been Mrs. Halleck's hus- 
band, but her guardian ; and it turns out a miserably unsuc- 
cessful one. The end has come. What remains must be seen 
through other eyes than mine. I must have your help and 
Barclay's. Perhaps I may be able to do without you till you 
can give me some time that doesn't belong to the Company. 
Barclay knows things that must have their weight. I have 
written him he must be ready to come at any moment. Un- 
less something new happens I can let the time depend on 
you." 

After giving Lyon's hand a grip that he felt till the next 
shock came, Halleck caught a car headed in a diverging 
direction. 



386 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DEGENERATE 



THE DEGENERATE 



XXIV 
THE DEGENERATE 

'The one credit to the orgy was a currish sense of 

accountability." 



BUCK LYON had been running strictly true to form. 
Judicious handling by relays of experienced coaches 
had at last landed him among the certificate holders of the 
most select forcing establishment for cub intellects in the city. 

With fewer flunks and conditions, he had meanwhile passed 
the entrance examinations of several other types of institu- 
tions, whose hall-mark had left a much deeper impress on his 
propensities. 

Buck's Chief of Staff was Kid Granniss. 

This young gentleman had made Buck's acquaintance at 
an inter-school track meet. For reasons not ascertained, he 
had found it convenient to follow up the opening. A trial 
trip or so put the two youths on rather easy terms, and latent 
affinities rapidly ripened intimacy into inseparability. 

The Kid was a friend of the trainer of the Pan-University 
School team. The precocity and affluence of his jewelry ex- 
hibit were sign and seal of his prowess in the junior heavy- 
weight class. 

The advent of the Kid occurred at a peculiarly convenient 
juncture in Buck's affairs. 

The juice had been squeezed out of all the innocent fruit 
in sight, and Buck was casting about for something with a 
livelier flavor. 

The concurrent conditions were also remarkably pro- 
pitious. 

Buck's mother had discovered that his devotion to study 
had been excessive for one of his tender years. If she had 
been fully advised of his frequent associations and employ- 
ments, between the time of locking himself into his room at 
night and letting himself into the house through a rear door 
at the approach of morning, her correlation of antecedents 
and consequents might have been somewhat disarranged. 
Nothing so untoward had cast doubt, however, upon the 
inerrancy of her maternal affections. 

391 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DEGENERATE 



The fashionable specialist who had lately displaced the fam- 
ily physician in Mrs. Lyon's councils had never been obliged 
to undergo treatment for moral farsightedness ; but the vogue 
of that astute auxiliary was visible testimony that he had 
qualified as an accomplished utilitarian within the shorter cir- 
cuits. His impressiveness was accentuated by the profound 
and protracted consideration through which he arrived at the 
conclusion that he must prescribe precisely what he had seen 
at the start his patients were bound to have. 

The doctor's ratification of Mrs. Lyon's diagnosis was to be 
expected from a scientific man of his rare good sense. "A 
young fellow of his spirit mustn't be allowed to go to the limit 
of his ambition. He will overhaul the slow coaches soon 
enough. Give him a year in the pasture. Plenty of out- 
doors. No fret about a harness. Let him kick up his heels all 
he pleases. He will be the better for it in the end if his body 
has a turn, after this long pull at the books." 

While the family arrangement did not include formal 
adoption of The Kid as companion to the delicate scion, and 
keeper of his conscience ; while it must even be admitted that, 
until his variation of Pilgrim's Progress was relatively far ad- 
vanced, Buck neglected mention of his mentor at home ; nat- 
ural selection took care of that detail, including the usual pro- 
visions of nature for guarding against premature exposure of 
her more subtile workings. 

In the language of less circuitous and inconsequent judg- 
ment than Mrs. Lyon's fond-motherly type of opinion, Buck 
was turned loose on the town. In the parental version, he 
was giving his body a chance to get even with his brain. The 
unfeeling vulgarity of the street simply placed here and there 
a bet on the Lyons' chances in the familiar game ; " Given a 
boy with nothing to do, with plenty of money, and all his 
time to do it in, and the steering in proper hands, how long 
will it take to find the answer?" 

Promotion through the early grades of restaurant, and pool 
room and theatre wisdom had been rapid and eventless. It 
had been more a mass process than an individual venture; 
but it had served to sift out a half dozen likely candidates 
for faster company. 

It was at this auspicious moment that Buck and The Kid 
discovered each other. 

The latter probably numbered in his collection of trophies 

392 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DEGENERATE 



no honor medals in the methodology of education ; but if our 
present purpose permitted digression to a remotely relevant 
theme, we might show that this was an evidence of the clan- 
nishness of institutions. Kid Granniss needed no arbitrary at- 
testation of attainments nor of regularity. He respired in- 
terest-psychology. He exuded inductive pedagogy. He ex- 
uberated in progressive experience. He had not been led 
astray by the mutation theory. He believed in variation by 
continuity. He seemed never to lack resources for daily 
change of programme ; but no more did he fall into the bad 
management of setting the date of a number before appetite 
for that particular type of offering had been developed, or 
after the demand had appeared for a more highly seasoned 
bill of fare. 

Mrs. Lyon did not believe in nagging a boy. She wanted 
her son to be let alone, and to form his own character. She 
was sure a boy must be independent, in order to learn re- 
sponsibility and self-control. Of course she expected Chester 
to confide in her ; but the fact that his tastes tended from the 
beginning in lines which even his mother's partiality could 
not have approved, early gave a color of romance to his ac- 
counts of himself; and this embellishment necessarily grew 
more and more imaginative as the action advanced. 

It was also a matter of curious speculation to Mrs. Lyon that 
Chester was so little attracted to any of the young ladies of 
his own age in her circle of acquaintance. The "proms" and 
"informals" that he talked about seldom drew from lists of 
young women which she could very precisely verify ; but so far 
as she could infer from guarded allusions by the mothers of 
some of his boy friends, Chester was not singular in this re- 
spect. Mrs. Lyon was too tactful to pry into the matter; and es- 
pecially after an inadvertent reference to it had drawn from 
the sensitive young man the annoyed exclamation, "All those 
girls with the tabby-cat attachments make me weary ! What's 
the fun of girls anyway, if they've always got to be practic- 
ing their Sunday School lessons!" From this time, Mrs. 
Lyon leaned towards the view that refined society had be- 
come too artificial, and had needlessly restricted young peo- 
ple's freedom. 

The second house maid might have thrown some light upon 
the subject; but to do so would hardly have been for her in- 
terest, as she saw it. That discreet young person ordered her 

393 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DEGENERATE 



conduct toward Mrs. Lyon's son with a reserve at certain 
points in notable contrast with her responsiveness, and even 
complaisance, in other matters usually regarded as more vital. 
On none of the occasions for instance when she had engaged 
in conversation with the young man of the family, had she 
given him reason to suppose that she was advised of the ex- 
istence of The Kid, still less that they had a mutual under- 
standing. Under all the circumstances, it was quite out of the 
question that any member of the household should have ob- 
served a coincidence between her application for employment 
at the Lyon homestead and Buck's formation, a few weeks 
previous, of an offensive and defensive alliance with the em- 
bryo pugilist. 

It would be fruitless to inquire how much information, and 
of what sort, Mrs. Lyon would have found necessary before 
deciding upon a change of policy toward her son. She had, 
for example, never seen him in company with this same 
young woman, during runs of an hour or two from the city. 
Data not in Mrs. Lyon's possession would certainly have been 
requisite to satisfy her of the purposes which may have ac- 
counted for their tarrying at certain points during these trips. 
It would accordingly be idle to conjecture what her theory 
might have been of the nature of Chester's interest in the 
servants. 

Buck's fresh air regimen was not carried to the extreme of 
unintermittent exposure to the caprices of climate. Indeed, 
there were intervals of considerable duration when the treat- 
ment was relaxed by recourse to a variously artificialized at- 
mosphere. The Kid was even able to suggest a succession of 
stimulating occupations for which interiors, and indeed some- 
what isolated and retired apartments were advisable. Cer- 
tain of these pursuits were most absorbing when confined to 
select companies of men, preferably of a type so constituted 
as to find protracted satisfaction in conferring sums of money, 
without visible return, upon receptive associates. 

Others of these occasions illustrated the resources of mixed 
society. Here again, Mrs. Lyon might have found material 
for enlargement of her views upon the wisdom and the un- 
wisdom of social conventions. She would have observed that 
Chester seemed more unconstrained than in the surroundings 
with which she was familiar. At the same time, there would 
have been food for reflection in the fact that the young ladies 

394 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DEGENERATE 



who graced these companies, and with whom Chester's man- 
ner did not lack animation, had quite generally discontinued 
the use of Pasteurized milk as a favorite beverage ; while their 
chaperons were either preoccupied elsewhere, or were con- 
spicuously efficient in removing accidental barriers to en- 
joyment. 

No slight condiment to Buck's relish of his friend was The 
Kid's easy-going acquaintance with the leading spirits in these 
garish social strata, It is one thing to see the town from the 
cigarette seats in the rubber-neck wagon, and quite a dif- 
ferent thing to know you would be welcomed by the leading 
people, at any hour of the day or night, without an invita- 
tion. In a remarkably short time The Kid's progressive 
method had brought Buck within the lure of the dizzy ambi- 
tion to carry a pass-key to the sporting world, and to be every- 
where on terms of first-name familiarity with the main flash. 

Since it had never been required of Buck that he should toil 
or spin in order to be fed and clothed, it did not occur to him 
that there was anything demanding inquiry in the apparent 
amplitude of The Kid's revenues. It did not appear that he 
had parents who might, like Buck's, have felt it a duty and a 
privilege to furnish an income commensurate with his dig- 
nity. Neither the Probate Court nor the Board of Equaliza- 
tion had ever been called upon to take cognizance of his es- 
tate. If Buck's attention had ever been arrested by the intri- 
cate subject of commissions, invidious interpretation of The 
Kid's intimacies with the hierarchy of managers might have 
been suggested. The detail that the number joining their 
various expeditions was never large enough to evoke The 
Kid's protest, so long as Buck did not object, might have been 
worth consideration. The Kid's fastidiousness in matters of 
tailoring and haberdashery, and his solicitude that the gang 
should not be misinformed about the perfectly correct sources 
of these and other supplies, might have come under cruel 
suspicion. None of these interferences with the even tenor of 
their intercourse occurred however; and The Kid's vocation 
as leader of leisure and fashion was accepted with a piety 
which presaged conservative adherence to the orthodoxy of 
the gospel of privilege. 

But certain seeming reversions presently became prominent 
in the tastes and occupations of the forceful group of which 
Buck and The Kid were important members. The means 

395 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DEGENERATE 



were not at Mrs. Lyon's disposal, to be sure, to explain the 
new phenomena as withdrawals, or recoveries. To her mind, 
so far as she was informed of the change at all, the boys were 
merely becoming interested in a new group of the same sort 
of young women, respectable of course, but not of the best 
families, who had attracted them while they were in prep 
school. 

Others, not specialists in the psychology of degeneracy, if 
put in possession of the precise facts, might have inferred that 
association with certain feminine types had at last produced 
the normal reaction, and that the boys were returning to less 
equivocal interests. 

At all events the gang had turned its ingenuity to cultiva- 
tion of acquaintances among the girls in the Lakeside High 
School. 

Between Buck and the reputed "beauty of the school," Liz- 
zie Lawton, there had been what was known in school gossip 
as a "crush" at first sight. 

Lizzie's parents had never been ashamed to be called Cas- 
sidy, and their modest home in South Halsted Street was not 
to be despised ; but their oldest daughter's husband had a se- 
lect grocery trade in Kenwood, and as the family ambitions be- 
gan to centre around Lizzie, it was decided that she would 
have a better chance to make the most of herself if she lived 
with her sister while she was in the High School, and adopted 
her more genteel name. 

Lizzie Lawton was a fair sample of that product of which 
the present American blend is so prolific and so prodigal — 
abounding in body, alert of mind, and vibrant with a thou- 
sand expectations. Life in all its capacities was pulsing in 
her, and a little of the sound and sight of others' living had 
begun to stir her senses and her fancy. Mystery, romance, 
adventure, admiration, offerings, yes love! and power! were 
in the world. They were not far away ! They might come 
to her as well as to other girls ! Each curiosity and eagerness 
of woman expectant was tuned to the pitch of a vital wave. 

Woman's talisman, as Lizzie made it out, was ability to at- 
tract men. There was nothing ignoble in the secret, as she 
understood it. Beauty, of course ; and she was not vain of her 
beauty. She was just frankly conscious of it, and confident. 
Wit, she thought, and good temper, and no hysterics, and 
liking for helping other people have a good time — these must 

396 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DEGENERATE 



be the things that make the popular girl, and she was glad 
she seemed to have been born with them. She was pure 
minded, generous, affectionate, ready — but so hungrily un- 
satisfied ! 

Nothing in Lizzie Lawton's most fervid dreams had pic- 
tured quite as much in the actual world, and for her own self, 
as appeared to her in Buck Lyon. The family reputation 
alone would have intoxicated a steadier head ; but Lizzie saw 
besides in Buck himself everything strong and manly that 
reading and imagination had made her admire. More than 
that, he was not an empty handed hero. He came with no 
end of ability to change school-girl stupidity in a moment into 
the whirl which she mistook for real life. 

The acquaintance was only two or three weeks old, but 
youth is time high-geared. In those weeks the gang had 
piloted an equal number of High School girls through degrees 
of initiation into world-wisdom for which the boys uncour- 
iered had required almost as many years. Yet from the pres- 
ent view-point of the gang, the girls had only completed the 
sort of rushing stunts that had prepared the way for The Kid's 
appearance. 

It had been a supper and a box-party. As the curtain fell, 
and the start was made toward the exit, Buck pulled his lieu- 
tenant back behind the portiere, and brusquely whispered the 
directions : — "Chase yourself now, Kid, and call off the rest, 
I'm taking her over to Madam's. She thinks the actorines 
go there to amuse themselves after the play. Watch me find 
out how fast she warms up. Come 'round in an hour or so 
if you want to. Ta-ta !" 

Buck had his mother's Brougham a block away, and The 
Kid made it easy for him to give the party the slip and start 
on the rest of his programme. As they stepped out after a 
short drive, Buck instructed the coachman, "Pull in at Sat- 
terlee's, John. I'll 'phone over." 

Next to the groping urgings of blindfolded nature, Buck's 
busiest accomplice in misleading Lizzie Lawton was her own 
sensitiveness to the shame of being thought "slow." This 
was her one morbidness — the fear of betraying some sort of 
ignorance that men would call unsophisticated. She was not 
a bad girl. She was finely proud and audacious and femi- 
nine. Her love of Buck was as blameless as love can ever be 



397 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DEGENERATE 



when bewildered and bedazzled by lavishings and protesta- 
tions which it cannot distinguish from love as honest as itself. 

Although she suspected nothing of the sort, these few weeks 
had been for Lizzie Lawton an almost continuous rehearsal 
of the prologue to the drama of The Fall. Unless we lodge 
some of our arbitrary theorizings in her typical healthy de- 
velopment, she had never been tempted until she found that 
she wanted everything that Buck wanted. Then, if she only 
knew ! If there were some one she could ask ! Not her mother, 
for she wouldn't understand, and hardly more her sister. 
Were those girls on the Avenue ever in her place ? And what 
did they do? But always when Buck wanted most, and her 
heart responded most, a preventing shadow had drawn be- 
tween him and her begun consents. 

Lizzie's mettlesome ambition to be classed by the boys, and 
especially by Buck, as a "good fellow" was to have its most 
cynical test in this House of Dread. She wished Buck had 
not wanted to take her there; but somebody went there, of 
course, and Buck met other girls there, and she would show 
less nerve than they if she didn't go. 

The house was one of those landmarks of the period imme- 
diately following the fire which the wave of expansion had 
meanwhile left in the belt of desolation between the centre 
and the newer residence districts. It had been the mansion of 
a prominent citizen. Space was its chief distinction; yet it 
had put out extensions rearward since it had become some- 
thing different from a family residence. 

It was a new experience to Lizzie to be obliged to pretend 
interest in adventure. Her light-heartedness had never failed 
her before, but there was nothing natural now in her struggle 
to appear pleased and unconcerned. 

Her instincts enlightened her instantly that there was noth- 
ing in the place to which anything healthy could respond. 
The big, high rooms, with the heavy, stuffy hangings, the dim 
lights, the smoke-laden air, were suffocating. She had a feel- 
ing that invisible lurkings and prowlings were all around 
her. The women who seemed to belong there, and whose 
evident efforts to attract the men as fast as they appeared 
were apparently more ingenious than successful, were of a 
sort that Lizzie had never noticed before. If they were ac- 
tresses, their costumes were different from anything she had 
seen on the stage. One or two of them were inviting the men 

398 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DEGENERATE 



to dance; and Lizzie's eye caught flirtings of draperies in- 
tended to allure partners, but they sent her heart into her 
throat; and only that untaught maidenly self-esteem which 
could not risk ridicule suppressed her disgust, and her fear 
and her longing to escape. 

Buck drew her to a little table conveniently placed for 
watching the visitors. He ordered mint juleps, and while 
they were sipping the mixtures which answered to that name, 
he did his best to offset the first impressions, which he was too 
wise to misunderstand. He told Lizzie not to be bored by 
these old-timers. The real push would be coming along soon. 
He tried to entertain her with fictitious gossip about the people 
in sight. Lizzie had not connected her alarm with Buck. She 
had no suspicion of him that might have suggested compari- 
son with a young panther poising for his first spring at live 
prey. Yet with every word he spoke her efforts to return gay 
answers became more forced. 

The smell of musk that oozed through the tobacco fumes 
was sickening. Ever since she could remember, certainly 
long before her confirmation, Lizzie had always attended mass 
with her mother on Sunday. As one of the women in the 
exposive red robes brushed by, shedding her thick odors, the 
service and all it meant to Lizzie appeared in hideous trans- 
formation. The scene was the devil's altar, and these women 
were censers of the incense of hell ! 

The balancing between horror and vanity of sophistication 
was still undecided, when a florid woman, in wilted evening 
dress, and bespangled with stones which Lizzie was too agi- 
tated to suspect, swept up to their table and spoke to Buck as 
though he had forgotten something which she expected of 
him. 

"The fancy dancing will begin in a minute on the next 
floor, Mr. Lyon." 

Lizzie thought nothing could be worse than she had seen. 
There might be a chance up stairs for a sweet breath ; and peo- 
ple might really be amusing themselves. Though she would 
have felt like a captive bird released if Buck had let her as- 
sume the rest, and had taken her home, she tried more bravely 
than ever to conceal from him that she was hesitating. And 
Buck had no more relentings than a python. When he coiled 
his arm around her waist, and felt the palpitations ; and when 
her breath came quicker at every step, as he pressed her 

390 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DEGENERATE 



closer; all the pity in his parched little heart was licked up 
into the gloatings he had kindled. 

The scene on the second floor was not only not a relief to 
Lizzie, but her fluttering senses told her at a glance that it 
was merely a repetition of the first act below, only noisier and 
bolder, with some of the people more sated, others more fever- 
ish and greedy. 

Buck found two chairs and pulling them a little distance 
from the rest urged Lizzie into one of them, adding assur- 
ingly, "Hold on to the other one, Lizzie, till I pay the next 
fiddler/' 

The bar-keep in butler's attire busy at the sideboard wasted 
no time, after he had felt the bill that Buck wadded into his 
hand while hurrying a few words in a low tone into his ear. 
Two champagne glasses were placed ; something from a small 
vial was dropped into one of them, and both were filled with 
the foaming liquid. 

Returning with the two glasses, and playing on the string 
that he had never found out of tune, Buck put the treacherous 
drink as lightly to the girl's lips as though it had been water 
from the spring. "We're going stale, Lizzie. This'll perk us 
up a lot, and we'll feel like showing 'em a few fancy steps 
ourselves." 

Ice cream would have been more welcome to Lizzie; but 
anything cold and acid promised relief from the hot throb- 
bing terror. She followed Buck's lead in draining her glass, 
and in spite of a pungent after-taste for a blessed moment she 
felt restored to herself. 

Added to the compound which she had drunk before, the 
heady liquor leaped so quickly into Lizzie's brain that at first 
it more than verified Buck's prediction. In her excitement 
Lizzie lost care for the surroundings. Her body seemed so 
light that motion was easier than rest, but rhythm was neces- 
sary for balance. Spritishly beckoning Buck, she led him an 
elfish chase back and forth through the rooms filled with 
jaded revellers. Her laugh was so careless, and her motion so 
graceful, that its apparent spirit of happiness roused the dull 
company ; and she set the pace for such a deceptive imitation 
of an innocent frolic as had not warmed those case-hardened 
walls since they had harbored real merriment in their do- 
mestic days. 

400 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DEGENERATE 



Then another change came. The ecstasy in Lizzie's brain 
became dizzy and drowsy. She sank limp into a chair. Her 
head rested heavily on Buck's shoulder. Presently she rose 
to her feet again, clutching at her throat, gasping, trying to 
resist the lethargy, then throwing herself into Buck's arms 
and pleading for air. 

He led her, almost carried her, along a corridor. They en- 
tered the first unoccupied room, and the door closed behind 
them. 

Kid Granniss, with Tom Sears and Bud Owton, had been 
trying for more than an hour to amuse themselves with the 
remnant of the soiled collection. The thrumbing and the 
blare, the vacant laughter and the joyless songs, the repulsive 
enticings, and the bleary caressings for the first time affected 
even The Kid like a view of the spectacle from the back of the 
stage. The other boys were neither so new to these sights nor 
so calloused that the tawdry marketings could impose upon 
them in their present state of mind. The night had not only 
been enlivened by the unusual episode, but it was keeping up 
everyone's curiosity. The boys easily learned the story, and 
they were rational enough to be uneasy that the affair had 
gone so far, and to be anxious about consequences. 

At last Buck appeared, his face showing so ashen against 
the murky background that, if they could, the boys would 
have dodged hearing its meaning in words. He motioned 
them into an alcove, pulled their heads together, and hissed 
out his confession. " Great God! fellers, she's dead! and 
hell's to pay !" 

The one credit to the orgy was the birth of a currish sense 
of accountability. Buck had been so cowed by the effects of 
his crime that he had not dared to send for help till he was 
convinced of the worst. Then his instinct of self-preservation 
threw all his cunning into circuit. He issued his orders like 
a brigand at bay: "Stand by me, Kid, to quiet Madam. 
'Phone for John at Satterlee's, Tom, and stay with the horses 
till he brings her down. Come up with him, Bud ; then all 
hike before the cops are on !" 

The brief council had hardly closed, before the house had 
sensed the danger. The jangling noises seemed to have set- 
tled sullenly into a choke-damp. Lights were turned down, 
and all the sounds that remained were spooky whispers, and 

401 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DEGENERATE 



the swish of women's garments, and stealthy dispersals, like 
the scurry ings of guilty ghosts. 

Blank featured, according to the correctest canons of his 
profession; resolute with almost canine fidelity to its tradi- 
tion, "Right or wrong, my people!" John Cassidy stalked 
through the deserted halls no more stalwart in body than in 
his contempt for the smudge which his duty called him to 
enter. He was under the impression that Buck had been 
taken ill. He charged all to the keeper of the resort. If he 
had been pretender enough to remove his hat, an unruly 
contraction of his brows would have betrayed his rugged in- 
ward revolt against the dubious law that a man may never lay 
violent hands upon a woman. 

At sight of Buck in the corridor, opposite an open door, 
Cassidy curbed his surprise, and impassively took the order, 
interpreted by a gesture pointing into the room, "We must 
get her to Kenwood quick ;" but as Buck added the address, 
Cassidy recoiled and staggered as from touch of a live wire. 
He took a step or two into the room, then turned wild-eyed to 
Buck, and stood stammering incoherent sounds that he was 
evidently trying to form into an exclamation. 

"What are you blithering about, John?" demanded Buck, 
nervously. "This is no time to be womanish. Get busy and 
have this thing over with in a hurry !" 

Cassidy was trembling as a strong man trembles when there 
is nothing more to lose, and no way to make a fight with fate. 
Buck supposed it was cowardice, and he sneered spitefully; 
but another tract in his moral sense began to function when 
he felt himself in Cassidy's strangling grasp, shaken like a 
puppy by an angered mastiff, and when another dimension 
of his liability dawned on him through the shrill cry, "It's 
our Lizzie ! It's our Lizzie !" 

Then sound and motion ceased in the stupefied group, as 
the father released the whimpering culprit and again turned 
into the room, softly approaching for a nearer look at the 
rigid face. The seconds took so long in passing that Buck's 
unchastened impatience conjured the heartless fancy of Cas- 
sidy petrifying, as he bent over his child. 

With a groan that would have pierced more impenetrable 
consciences than those in the awed circle, the stricken man 
fell to his knees, and clutching at the edge of the coverings 
that had been thrown over the victim, buried his face in them, 

402 



L 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE DEGENERATE 



while convulsive waves coursed through his body, until his 
turbulent feelings found utterance in the prayer that seemed 
to be echoed from the depths, "Holy Mother of God! Blessed 

Mary! Pity! Pity! Pity !" 

The last appeal, sustained as inarticulate tone, died away 
in a hoarse guttural sigh, that was followed by a torrent of 
sobs. 

If the prayer was answered on the spot, it was in giving 
back strength for what remained. The grief was so elemental, 
and so eloquent, that even the unfeeling haste of the on- 
lookers did not dare to interrupt it. 

When the storm had passed, the mourner raised his head 
for a moment and scanned the figure before him, as though 
making sure that he was not waking from an awful dream. 
Then he rose to his feet and straightening himself stood plan- 
ning. He seemed to have forgotten that he was not alone. A 
white covering had been turned back from the bed. Gently 
swathing the form of his child in it, and gathering the bur- 
den in his arms as though it had been an infant in swaddling 
clothes, he walked firmly to the street and entered the 
Brougham. 

As Buck stood uneasily at the carriage door, the father 
simply commanded, "Drive to the mother!" 

The unexpected eleventh hour turn of the debate had so 
stimulated Logan Lyon that he could not dismiss it until he 
had reviewed the whole case, and had made memoranda of 
points that would require the most argument with the direc- 
tors. Then he dropped asleep in his chair, and at the tele- 
phone call his first notion was that Halleck was still wrench- 
ing his hand. He made sure that his father's door was 
closed, then took down the receiver. 

Buck locked up on a murder charge ! 

Logan Lyon had never felt at liberty to express opinions 
about the parental policy toward his half-brother. But all 
that was past. His loyalty to his father was now on duty, to 
break the force of the blow. 

The chauffeur had been sleeping on his arms for weeks, and 
the car was promptly at the door. Then came beating the 
speed limit to the station ; the few decisive words with the 
Lieutenant and with Buck, showing that more time there 

403 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE DEGENERATE 



would be wasted ; the round of the city editors of the morning 
papers — the mail editions were already off — insuring from 
all, with possibly one exception, handling of the story with 
justice to the public tempered by mercy to the parents; then 
the last slender thread of hope — hope not to remove the guilt, 
but to find its consequences in different form; hope not to 
undo the tragedy, but to have the boon of meeting some of 
its after effects with a fighting chance ; hope which the doc- 
tors must measure ; there was the assembling of the physicians, 
the torturing waiting, and at last the report. 

Buck Lyon had not taken Lizzie Cassidy's life, he had only 
— blasted it ! 



404 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



XXV 

THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 

"My first principle is that it is the chief duty of the Company 
to adopt the policy which will do most towards enabling 
each one of its workers to make the most of his life." 



TO the group at The Lodge it seemed as though the period 
since their gathering a week before reached back an era. 

The change that had come over their outlook was thus far 
so undefined that they had hardly gone beyond expressing it 
to themselves in terms of time. 

Knowledge of Buck's transition from spoiled child to 
social problem had been kept from Mrs. Lyon until Edith and 
Hester reached the Lake on a special train, that left the city 
after Logan had assigned them their parts in the emergency 
measures. Edgerly had kept them supplied by long distance 
with every detail which could be of use in their ministrations. 

On Sunday morning it was evident that the parents wanted 
to be alone. 

Logan reminded Hester of her outstanding plan to make 
the circuit of the Lake by the "fisherman's path;" and in fif- 
teen minutes she was ready for the start. 

If Edgerly had been within hearing distance during the 
first hour or so, he might have found himself casting about for 
additions to the rubrics under which he had once attempted 
to classify Hester. 

She struck into the narrow foot-way and set the pace for a 
mile or two, as though she were in training and this were a 
Marathon race. 

Lyon trailed behind, easily holding the speed, though walk- 
ing had always been too much of a time-consumer for him to 
afford the luxury as an exercise ; but he amused himself with 
guesses about the distance they would cover before Hester 
would drop to a slower stroke. 

Then not so much a physical reaction as a change of mind 
started Hester botanizing and ornithologizing. Lyon couldn't 
decide whether the fusillade of questions she turned upon him 
was result of knowing nothing or everything about the plants 
and birds of the region ; but he reflected that if he had a law 

4 0.7 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



case which would turn upon his ability in this line of cross- 
examination, he wouldn't know how to load himself to fire 
her style of questions. He didn't see how she could go into the 
items more thoroughly if she had been under contract to fur- 
nish labels for the National Museum ; and he wondered how 
much more she could do in Spring, before the witherings and 
the migrations. 

Without warning, this scientific zeal passed into the pranks 
of a vaudeville girl on an outing. Coming to a broader stretch 
of path, Hester challenged Logan to a hundred yard dash. 
She tried skipping stones along the placid surface of the water. 
She made a swing of a low hanging limb. She chattered and 
acted a medley of scraps, from the farce comedy to the Greek 
tragedy level; and in spaces sufficiently remote from the 
houses she ran over a parallel gamut of musical scatterings, in 
a voice strong enough for grand opera. 

It was no more certain that Hester was of typical nervous 
temperament than that she was not neurotic. This volatility 
was not pathological. It was not even mildly hysterical. It 
was as natural as a lark's flight or song, and as wholesome in 
its place as her woman's broodings, with Edith, over the af- 
flicted mother. 

This strain in Hester's composition had been in retirement 
most of the time since her father's death. While its liberty 
this morning was spontaneous, it was not entirely emotional. 
It was in part an intelligent and purposeful putting of the 
circumstances to their best use. Logan's pet name, "Gypsy," 
fairly fitted Hester in the days when she was an avid little 
child of nature. Ever since she had been old enough to read 
about them she had avowed affection for Mignon, and envy 
for the maid of the Lorelei. She had thrown herself into this 
romp, in a time and place that seemed made for it, just as she 
would have taken a plunge in the surf of the Lido. 

Not that Hester went through a deliberate course of reason- 
ing, any more than she did when she sprinkled salt on her 
butter. In either case she could have accounted for her rea- 
sons easily enough, if obliged to testify. She not only felt 
the need of relaxing after the months of anxiety, with the 
climax of the last few hours, but she knew it would freshen 
her for the more taxing decisions which could not be long 
deferred. 

408 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



It would have been less easy for Hester to tell how much 
her outburst had been for Logan's benefit rather than her own. 
Until the two days just past, she had never been in a position 
to see, as Mr. Lyon himself probably did not realize, how jeal- 
ously Logan was a guardian for his father. This glimpse into 
the care of the younger man for the older gave her a new 
view of the burden Logan was carrying ; but she was not aware 
of the charge on his loyalty in the problem of bearing his 
double load with his strength divided against itself. She 
merely felt as sane appreciation of a little out-door play for 
him as for herself. 

That the ebullition was under complete control of judgment 
was plain in Hester's next lead. She accepted the invitation 
of a rustic bench as shamelessly as though she had made no 
athletic pretensions ; and as self-possessed as in her most quiet 
moods, she spoiled Logan's preparations for making fun of 
her early need of rest : — 

"Spare yourself the trouble of laughing at me, Mr. Know- 
It-Better," she murmured, with her head bolstered against the 
high back of the bench, and her eyes closed as though she were 
settling herself for a siesta. "I'm tired, and I glory in it. A 
before-breakfast gallop would be the only dangerous com- 
petitor. And you can't even make me quarrel with you for 
thinking I won't last to the end of the course. I'm not too 
sure of it myself. What is it they say at the track? 'Too 
skittish for a good getaway ?' But it was sport for sport's sake, 
and aren't we having it? If it has toned you up as much as 
it has me, you are as ready to tell me the latest about the strike 
as I am to listen. Things can't have stood still a whole 
week?" 

Then Lyon recited the story of the Casino conference. He 
not only told the result, but he detailed the conversation. His 
account would have compared favorably with an expert steno- 
graphic report, except that he dramatized it here and there, 
and not at all to Graham's prejudice. 

Hester had kept her eyes closed during most of the repeti- 
tion ; but without moving her head she opened them full on 
Lyon when he stopped speaking, and their look left him no 
need to be told that she was brimming over with exultation. 

"Logan!" she reproved; "you haven't told which of the 
three called for the Nunc Dimittis/" 

409 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



Whatever his freedom as chronicler, Lyon was not taking 
liberties with his liabilities as attorney ; and he dutifully drew 
the line. "No such infringement on the poetic license con- 
cession ! When the Muse of History writes it up a thousand 
years from now, I hope that sort of garnishment will match. 
Truth compelled me to stop, however, just before I should 
have been obliged to depose that after they had come down 
from their Mount of Transfiguration one of the three at least 
went to sleep to the lullaby, 'The King of France, with twice 
ten thousand men.' " 

"You can't mean," searched Hester, bending toward him 
until her arm had to prop her unstable position upon a bar of 
the seat between them ; "You can't mean that it would be pos- 
sible to reject this splendid compromise?" 

"Seriously, Hester," concluded Lyon, "while I'm with the 
plan for all I'm worth, as far as argument goes, in my opinion 
the only chance in the world that our directors will accept 
such a proposition is in the greater fear they may have of the 
New Jersey syndicate than of the strikers." 

"Then I must walk some more to find myself," was Hes- 
ter's stupefied reaction. 

This time they started off side by side, like a pair of reliable 
roadsters. Neither spoke for some distance, but Hester's mind 
was at work, and she showed her progress from thinking to- 
ward doing when after a little she asked abruptly, "How 
much do I count in the Company, Logan?" 

"On a stock vote," Lyon replied, in a strictly professional 
tone, "if you should go against the Lyon interests, enough 
smaller holders would probably be with you to beat us." 

It was not slow thinking that retarded Hester's answer. It 
was one of her habits to project her thought, and to see how it 
would look under the make-believe that it had nothing to do 
with herself. This time, halting, she used Lyon's eyes as a 
reflector ; and she tried every angle of light on the picture of 
herself acting unfilially toward her guardian. 

Hester was not of those chilled souls whose pride of ab- 
straction hushes their heart beats. The sort of idealism which 
starts its building of more stately social mansions on the debris 
of violated personal ties did not stimulate her sense of plausi- 
bility 

"You know I couldn't, Logan ! Who was the old Roman 
that condemned his son to death, that has been passed along 

410 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



in the school books as one of the heroic types we ought to 
live back to? I have always been grateful that I didn't ad- 
mire him. Within the past forty-eight hours I have found I 
could imagine the necessity of telling my own son he deserved 
the death penalty ; and I might even feel bound to confess it 

in public; but when it came to passing sentence myself 

No! The scheme of things would have to excuse me, and 
make other arrangements!" 

They tramped another stage in silence, and almost equally 
oppressed by a feeling of bafflement. 

When Hester spoke again she seemed to be verifying her 
vision by a retrospect over the whole theoretical tour of in- 
spection of which Lyon had heard a few fragments 

"The more I think about property laws, Logan, and es- 
pecially inheritance laws, the thing that impresses me most is 
that they are society's inventions for artificial selection of its 
gardeners, and housekeepers and butlers. If this artificial 
method proves to breed too many gardeners who huxter off 
the vegetables on their own account, and housekeepers who 
play bridge when they should be getting the meals, and but- 
lers who steal the family spoons and sell them for drinks, the 
method is bad ; and enlightened self-interest will surely make 
society change it for a better." 

Then she dropped into a brown study for a moment, and 
seemed to be picking her way with each word, as she followed 
out the figure. 

"We hear sometimes of old house servants, who have had 
things their own way so long that at last the family must 
choose between discharging them and acknowledging them 
as masters. Could the cartoonists make that kind of a public 
servant out of Uncle David?" 

Logan Lyon was prepared to admit to the directors that the 
scheme to which he was a recent convert owed its availability 
to pure accident. Standing on its merits, in ordinary times, 
it would be a quarter section in Utopia. With the beneficent 
aid of that compulsion which has made such a brilliant his- 
toric record transmuting men's necessities into their virtues, 
Lyon believed the Avery Company, although convinced 
against its will, and in spite of itself and a cold world, might 
prove that business may be done on that plane. He was not 
prepared to believe that his father could not adapt himself to 
the new situation. 

411 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



Indeed the one remnant of mysticism which Logan al- 
lowed to interfere with his strictly matter-of-fact analysis of 
the Avery business was the palliating fiction that his father 
was the Company's agent, instead of its will. He flinched 
from identifying the Company's policy with his father's per- 
sonality. It would not have been easy to deceive him about 
the actual state of affairs in another corporation; but when- 
ever he had to reflect upon his father's moral relation to the 
Avery policy he reverted to the conception that the President 
was merely the executive of a controlling corporate conscious- 
ness. Accordingly he could not admit to Hester, nor even to 
himself, that her suggestion was fair. He cogitated so ab- 
stractedly that Hester was wondering whether he would come 
back to her query at all ; but he presently passed from silent 
to audible meditation in speaking out the substitute he had 
pictured : — 

"After the manager had brought the land under cultivation 
and had it yielding a high rate of return, it would have to be 
a cranky lot of owners that would want to interfere with him 
for calling a halt on the help, if he believed they were turning 
the farm over to weeds." 

Hester knew that the son's allegiance to the father was at 
present so loyally enlisted that argument involving the Presi- 
dent of the Company would be lost on Logan. Her instinct 
was keener though than his that, entirely apart from the 
merits of the strike, the outrage which now attainted the 
Lyon name had put the whole family estimate of moral values 
on trial. Her loathing for the particular deed in which 
Buck's foulness had betrayed itself was no more genuine than 
Logan's; but he had thought of it so far only as it affected 
the individuals directly concerned. He had not connected 
it with business, nor with social standards in general. 

To Hester there seemed no room for question that the fam- 
ily must put itself right by making its future sacramental. It 
was equally clear to her that the Avery Company was com- 
promised, and that only some higher social compact could be 
its vindication. With this in mind she was assuming that 
Mr. Lyon would take the same view ; and not referring par- 
ticularly to the compromise, but to the whole readjustment 
which his moral standards would demand, she was trying to 
find a way of making his task easier when she ventured the 
guarded inquiry : — 

412 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



"Do you think anything I might say to Uncle David would 
do any good, Logan?" 

"Not so long as he thinks you don't know the difference 
between seed corn and thistle blows," gruffly answered Lyon. 

His peal of two voices was growing clangorous. He sus- 
pected that he was not holding his own in silencing the secret 
that his sympathies were with his father, not with his father's 
policies. His imagination read accusation of treason in Hes- 
ter's assumption that "do any good" would mean the same to 
him as to her. If overruled by his superiors he could fight 
against his judgment; but he had no rules to go by when he 
found himself maintaining one horn of a moral dilemma and 
believing in the other. Lyon was not the sort of man to sulk 
in his tent if his advice were not followed by the council of 
war. His lubberly reply, in perfunctory defense of his 
father's position, was the self-conscious actor's overplaying 
his part. 

The meaning of Logan's roughness did not fully appear 
to Hester. She credited it not to a conflict with divided duty, 
but to overwrought sympathy with his father. It was rather 
easy too, in the apartness of that calm, clear, restful atmos- 
phere, to minimize the realness and the nearness of the labor 
conflict, and to idealize out of its due proportion the final filial 
fidelity which took on firmness as the stress increased. 

They had reached a patch of lawn convexing like a stage 
down toward a pier which, but for its length, might have been 
the orchestra leader's platform. At one wing a log, from 
which enough of a great branch had been lopped off to leave 
a chair-shaped seat, and canopied with thickly woven ever- 
green, might have been set as Titania's throne. 

As she merged herself into the coziness of the retreat, with 
no more preliminaries than if it had been a scheduled way- 
station, and as Lyon stretched himself on the close-cropped 
turf, Hester intended to dismiss the vexing subject by intro- 
ducing a character study in the question : — "If his interests 
didn't cross ours at all, and if you could detach him entirely 
from our affairs, what would you think of Mr. Graham per- 
sonally, Logan?" 

The answer itself did not surprise Hester so much as the 
suddenness with which it seemed to be shot out of a long 
loaded chamber. "What should I think of a man that spends 
the income from his capitalism in Idaho subsidizing a turn- 

413 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



ing of capitalism upside down in Chicago? Can you make 
those two things pull together?" 

"The Boston papers abused him for that," Hester replied 
composedly, "and he took no notice of them. Channing Hart- 
ley drew his side out of him though, the last time he called in 
Brookline. Mr. Graham said he wouldn't be driven into any 
'see-me-go-up' advertising of himself, even in a good cause ; but 
he would be glad to pay the expenses of an impartial commis- 
sion to investigate his Idaho business, and report on its bear- 
ings upon the labor campaign. Then when Channing urged 
him he explained that he was actually doing in Idaho all that 
he knew how to ask any capitalist to do under present circum- 
stances. Indeed, he went so far as to say that he couldn't ask 
all capitalists to do as much at once, because many hadn't 
the help who would meet them half way, and a thousand 
other details would slow down the pace possible at many 
points. He had taken the trouble to get picked men into his 
employ. He had offered a better scale of wages than any 
competitor paid. He had opened up the books of the business, 
and under formal agreement he had talked its affairs through 
regularly with the help, as freely as if they had all been stock- 
holders. He had introduced a sickness, accident and old-age 
insurance system, besides committing the business to an ex- 
panding plan of local improvements. He had credited him- 
self personally with the salary which his grade of managerial 
work commands on the average throughout the country, plus 
the same percentage of premium which the other employees 
drew. Over and above all this, the business showed a sur- 
plus. Some of the men of course didn't know when they were 
well off, and demanded a pro rata division of the whole net 
income. The majority heartily supported the policy of turn- 
ing that surplus into an endowment, to spread the gospel of 
democracy till all the business of the country should adopt 
the same platform. The men as a rule accepted Graham's 
argument that it would be the same capitalism they professed 
to hate, if they should grab all there was in their lucky 
chance. He called on them to meet him in giving up some 
of his legal rights for the benefit of workers in general. They 
had not only done so much, but they had an organization of 
their own to help his scheme of campaigning and education. 
One of Channing's clients has interests in Idaho, and he ex- 
pressed the opinion that the whole story of the Graham en- 

414 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



terprises there would talk louder on the economic and moral 
side of his case than all his public speeches." 

The subject seemed to have exhausted its drawing powers 
with Lyon ; and conversation lapsed till Hester mischievously 
threw out the more provocative hint: — "Would it be very un- 
expected to you, Logan, if Elsie should marry Graham?" 

For an instant the question seemed to have made no im- 
pression. Then, with a long meaning whistle, Lyon suddenly 
swung himself about from his facing the Lake, he pivoted his 
head on his elbow, he pried for more evidence into Hester's 
expression, and as a climax he exploded the accusing re- 
joinder: "How long does this date back of Kissinger's leav- 
ing us?" 

"You're making a wrong connection, Logan," was Hester's 
quiet denial. "When he hears it, Mr. Kissinger will be more 
surprised than you are. Elsie herself doesn't know that she 
knows it's decided ; and I know it only by cooking up a ragout 
of odds and ends, and serving it with a little faith that the 
awkward old world can't mess everything that ought to 
happen." 

But there were other close-at-hand things which even Hes- 
ter's intuitiveness had not fathomed. Not a few far less pre- 
scient persons had often allowed themselves to indulge a some- 
what unrestricted freedom of thought and speech upon one 
ought-to-be which had never so much as cast its image across 
her imagination. If there had been anything untypical in 
Hester's commerce with life, it would be found in the un- 
ashamed eagerness with which her virgin fancy had consulted 
the oracles. She had never affected the defensive feminine 
fiction of unconcern about men ; but none of the astrologers 
of girlhood had pointed out a way which promised anything 
for her most intimate quest. She had no index to the seizure 
of Logan's mind, in the past week, by the feeling that all the 
unavailables he had ruled out of his practical program might 
easily be listed in the day's work, if he could have the help 
of a light which was probably beyond his reach. She did not 
know that the associating of Elsie's name with Graham's had 
affected Logan as bringing the light within the range of ap- 
propriation. She saw nothing but uninterest in a promising 
romance, and summons to take up the line of march, when he 
rose and stood looking down at her. There even seemed to 

415 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



be a threatening quality in the cloud on his face, which made 
her think the load of the family troubles was settling back on 
him with dulling weight. She did not know that Logan felt 
himself hanging on the decree of fate whether he should end 
among the inglorious majority of the overcome-of-the-world, 
or should win his spurs as a fighter for ideals. Her self-com- 
mand would have had to be more mechanical than it was, if 
she could have controlled every mark of surprise when the 
most highly charged words she had ever heard seemed to 
struggle from his lips: — 

"Have I been all along too much a brother to you, Hester, 
to be thinkable in a closer relation?" 

Lyon had to wait so long for a positive sign, that he suffered 
from a sense of having committed an offense against nature. 

It required some seconds for the blur in Hester's mind to 
resolve itself into accountable impressions. 

All the scenery seemed to have been instantly shifted, with 
no change in the stage directions. 

The first coherent association which Hester could make out 
was that an unrecognized image of Logan had been the lay- 
figure for every sketch of a pattern husband she had ever 
drawn. 

From her earliest recollections he seemed to have been cast 
for such a matter-of-course part in her drama, that she had 
never been aware of starting with an inventory of his traits 
as the working nucleus of specifications for the more import- 
ant character. 

The truth came into sight so suddenly, and at first it 
amounted to such a probable case against her innocence 
through years of composing from one model, that Hester was 
almost abject in her inability to persuade herself of anything 
extenuating. 

Then, as her steady gaze at Logan seemed to erase physical 
lines, and to leave the spiritual picture, Hester saw a partial 
explanation ; and she spoke so gently that he was at once ab- 
solved of his self-accusation, while the possibility of a favora- 
ble decision appeared still farther removed. "If it is unthinka- 
ble, Logan, it is not because you are too much brother, but 
because you are too little something else." 

"The worst is the kindest, Hester;" Logan smiled dismally. 
"Soothe me with a few of the most damaging items out of the 
roll of my deficiencies." 

416 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



Hester was farthest from trifling, but the picture flashed 
across her fancy of Logan listed on the Board of Trade, and 
the mothers of marriageable Chicago daughters boosting the 
quotations. That they would have nothing to say about de- 
ficiencies, except to keep the price from going beyond their 
range, was however not wholly a matter for cynicism ; and the 
scornful turn of Hester's thoughts was self -reproved into the 
reflection that the only deficiencies she had found in Logan 
were either rather microscopic matters of taste, or they were 
wholly hypothetical. 

Yet this summary did not explain Hester to herself; nor 
added to the reason which Logan suggested did it account for 
his negative place in her estimate. She was conscious of a 
blank in her acquaintance with Logan, but since the ques- 
tion had been thrust upon her she could not tell whether this 
lack, or the domestic familiarity, had been more responsible 
for keeping him out of her thoughts in the role in which he 
was now presented. 

Hester's artless recurrence to Logan, from childhood to the 
present moment, for the groundwork of her notion of a man, 
put her in a self-contradictory plight in her own eyes when 
she tried to show cause for her inability to focus him in the 
new perspective. She was not quite sure whether she was 
more defending herself or shielding him when she evaded his 
demand with the temporizing modification: "You put the 
word 'deficiencies' into the case Logan. Would that be the 
way to express it, if I had never thought of you as an archi- 
tect or a physician?" 

"In my inexperience," Lyon gruesomely admitted, "I may 
not have used the precise technical language of examiners for 
the classified civil service !" 

The laugh that they had to share was humanizing; and 
both returned to the subject a little less predisposed to behave 
absurdly. They were no longer stilted, and even the f acetious- 
ness which had become the later form of the teasing and de- 
fense that had been their gradually maturing medium of in- 
tercourse since Hester's childhood, would not ring true in 
their present temper. 

"If the values of the unknown quantities made you out the 
missing term in my life-formula, Logan, I should be the hap- 
piest girl in the world," confided Hester, without the least 
constraint; "but you do not realize how little you have let me 

417 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



know about the real center of your interests. What have you 
ever shown me about your business aims, to give me any hope 
that we could work for the same ends?" 

"I have always assumed, Hester," fumbled Lyon in genu- 
ine bewilderment, "that it was a mitigating circumstance if a 
seven-day-in-the-week overtime-working wage-laborer in a 
non-unionized employment didn't make his friends miserable 
between whiles with his worries. It may be unpardonable, 
but whatever else I may have had to be ashamed of I have 
always rather frankly approved of myself for letting my work 
do all the touting of my good intentions. It's a pretty hum- 
drum sort of merit, in spite of being less common than com- 
monplace; but I didn't suppose I was mistaken in my idea 
that you gave it a little credit. If your standard of a man 
calls for a type that spends half its time press-agenting its 
doings in the other half, of course, I must withdraw my 
credentials." 

"You know I think you are splendid, Logan, for these same 
things, and lots of others," was Hester's impulsive protest; 
but do you not see that we are strangers from the very point 
where our acquaintance most needs to begin? Whether Mr. 
Graham is right or not that all the workers in the Company, 
from the fuel yard to the directors' room, are partners, you 
and I cannot help being partners in the Avery business. There 
is something wrong about our partnership, and it must run 
deep into the business itself, if I am left out of its affairs that 
worry you, and am not even trusted to know whether you 
agree with your father that my seed corn is his thistle blows." 

If Hester had known that Logan had no more sincere wish 
than to make her his absolute confidante in testing his busi- 
ness standards, and that loyalty to his professional and filial 
codes was his sole reason for not following his inclination, she 
would have been more certain that business was confusing 
life; but she would also have begun to see possibilities that 
Logan might find his vocation in helping to transform the 
confusion into progress. As Logan did not answer, and could 
not without, as it seemed to him, betraying a double trust, 
Hester had no recourse but to take his silence as confession, 
and consequently as decision. 

She felt that Logan must recognize the force of the reason- 
ing, just as she did, when she tried to put the conclusion of the 
whole matter in another form. 

418 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



"If you had found, Logan, that the rest of your work for 
life must be done in the other hemisphere, would your near- 
est friend, even if he were the best fellow in the world, be the 
man you would join forces with, in spite of his having no use 
for operations beyond the boundaries of his own country?" 

Logan had no doubt about Hester's meaning, nor was he 
sure that the facts which she did not know would alter her 
opinion. He could not believe however that his motives, even 
from her point of view, were as incorrigible as she imagined ; 
yet the utmost liberty that he felt in self-defense was mildly 
interrogative. "Do you really think, Hester, it is a perfectly 
clear case that our worlds lie that far apart?" 

Not distrust of her forecast, but uncertainty about the right 
way to represent it, made Hester knit her brows and puzzle 
like a backward pupil in arithmetic. After she had worked 
off some of the unusable stimulus to her thoughts by scatter- 
ing, one by one, the wild flowers she had gathered, the conceit 
that her behaviour must seem to Logan more demented than 
Ophelia with her rosemary and rue recalled her to further ex- 
planation. 

"If nothing more difficult than oceans were between us," 
she qualified, "we might understand each other and be of 
mutual assistance. Since it is ideas, of a sort that have no 
means of exchanging traffic, but can simply come into colli- 
sion, the only safety is to route them over different lines. You 
and Uncle David agree with me on the fundamental thing 
that I must undertake the responsibility of opinions about 
business. Is it not your first business principle that your duty 
to the Company is to help it get all the dividends that the 
laws put within its reach ? My first principle is that it is the 
chief duty of the Company to adopt the policy which will do 
most towards enabling each one of its workers to make the 
most of his life. Could there be anything better than mutual 
interference between persons with such antagonistic aims?" 

With the same inquisitive method, Logan demurred: — 
"Would it make any difference, Hester, if I should tell you 
that I didn't know it till lately, but I have accepted your prin- 
ciple, and hold it as candidly as you do?" 

"It would make this difference, Logan," — and Hester was 
hardly more surprised by the admission in the question than 
by the readiness of her own reply; "I should have to suspend 

419 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



judgment until you had told me whether you had foreseen 
what putting your hands to such a plow means." 

"Tell me what you think it means/' urged Lyon. 

"Why!" exclaimed Hester, with a sudden exaltation which 
might befit the Jeanne d'Arc of tradition ; "It means that you 
would have to be a motor in the most radical revolution I have 
seen any mention of in history. It means that you would do 
your part towards freeing the world from the blight of the 
conservative conscience. It means that you would retire the 
type of conscience that is a time lock closed forever at some 
day of doom in the past, and that you would put in its place 
a time lock which would open with the day's work of every 
tomorrow. It means that you would put the property con- 
science, and the propriety conscience, and the policy con- 
science where they belong in the department of etiquette, and 
install an exploring conscience at the head of your depart- 
ment of justice." 

"But if I acknowledged that you have only put more pic- 
turesquely what the last few months had made me believe?" 
was Logan's corroborative testimony. 

"Why then, Logan," decided Hester, in the eagerness of 
the momentary triumph of her intellect at the expense of her 
affections, "you would prove your sincerity by making a 
martyr of yourself, if necessary, to force the compromise !" 

Logan's failure to answer at once meant to Hester that his 
new creed was less ready for duty in the real world than he 
supposed. The reliability of her own reasoning was, how- 
ever, immediately thrown under doubt. It might be, after 
all, that she needed as much as he to arrange a settlement with 
reality. The possibility became almost a conviction when she 
considered the question in which Logan reconstrued the prob- 
lem : — "Haven't you set up a more Spartan standard for me, 
Hester, than you could tolerate a moment ago for people with 
human affections ? Can you demand that the time factor and 
the personal factor shall have nothing to say about my mak- 
ing a steam hammer of myself, when you deny the right of 
the scheme of things to turn us into machines?" 



The launch had just rounded into sight. It had been or- 
dered to follow with the lunch basket, but it was ahead of time 
and place. Its signals showed that it was intentionally in ad- 

420 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE BROADER DEMOCRACY 



vance of the schedule, and was trying to attract attention. 
Logan hurried down the pier, and after a few words with the 
skipper he beckoned for Hester to follow. A message from 
Chicago called for Lyon's immediate return to the city. 

Hardly a word was exchanged as they sat through the short 
trip on the little hurricane deck over the wheelhouse. Lyon 
was reflecting whether, in telling Hester everything, he had 
strained his allegiance to his father and the Company. Hes- 
ter had been introduced to such an unsuspected phase of Logan 
that she was already seeing visions of what they might ac- 
complish together, if their purposes proved to be as harmo- 
nious as this revelation foreshadowed. 

Hester drew into both of hers the hand that Logan held out 
to balance her step from the rail ; and she held it while her 
eyes steadily meeting his spoke as candidly as her words : — 
"If you knew how much I want to be persuaded, Logan, you 
couldn't believe I am hesitating!" 



421 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 

XXVI 

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 

"We will make it a part of the business to find out how many 
instead of how few of its workers may have a property 
interest and a shareholder's voice in it." 



BARCLAY'S trip was unexpected. His messages sent from 
the train had not been delivered, and it was late Sunday 
forenoon when he got a long distance connection with The 
Lodge. 

Logan Lyon motored across to the main line, and was in 
the city for an evening's conference with Barclay after they 
had dined at the Club. 

The essential addition which Barclay brought to the evi- 
dence in hand more than confirmed Graham's prediction about 
the New Jersey syndicate. 

The Company must start up at full capacity in less than 
two weeks, or the odds would increase every day against its 
possible recovery of a fighting position in the market. 

As David Lyon sat at his desk in the private office Monday 
morning, he was outwardly a symbol of serenity, and strength 
and assured purpose. 

Hichborn had noticed an unusually kindly quality in his 
chief's greeting, and had inferred that the week had begun 
with more favorable indications. 

A directors' meeting had been called for twelve o'clock, and 
Hichborn assumed that the President's rapidity in disposing 
of routine matters mean that he wanted to be free for consid- 
eration of new business as long as possible before that hour. 

The Secretary could not understand, however, why he was 
displaced this morning, in his ordinary duties with Mr. Lyon, 
by his son. 

Without explanation, Logan Lyon instructed Hichborn to 
give him the necessary pointers on the items which called for 
the President's decision, and he carried the papers to and from 
his father's room. 

To one not committed to some theory, no signs would have 
appeared in Mr. Lyon's demeanor that his son's thoughtful- 
ness was needed, nor that it was appreciated. 

425 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 



Although Logan was in doubt on neither point, not even 
his sympathetic study of his father's character, and habitual 
watchfulness of his needs, had given him the means of pene- 
trating far into the effects of the latest incidents upon the 
paternal mind. 

Since the morning of Friday, father and son had been 
chiefly occupied with provisional details. Their questions had 
been, What is to be done next? There had been neither time 
nor desire for comment and expression of opinion. Logan 
had reported, in the briefest terms, the Casino interview, and 
he had 'phoned the bare facts brought by Barclay. 

With his desk cleared of the morning's work, Mr. Lyon put 
Hichborn under the strictest orders against interruption, and 
motioned Logan to a chair. 

It was some minutes before Mr. Lyon gave a clue to the di- 
rection of his thoughts. With his head thrown back, and 
his eyes closed, he presented the picture which Logan would 
most naturally recall in his father's absence. It was his ha- 
bitual attitude when collecting his thoughts. As Logan 
waited, watching his father's features for some telltale move- 
ment, not a shading of expression gave notice of the specific 
qualities of thought and feeling striving for mastery in the 
supreme earnest of David Lyon's life. 

His first words showed less emotion than he had often ex- 
hibited in asking about the record of a superintendent. "I 
understand you and Barclay to think we must decide today 
between withdrawal in favor of the New Jersey people, merger 
with them or acceptance of Halleck's memorandum?" 

"We think there are more reasons than ever for ruling out 
the merger," Logan cautiously amended. 

Mr. Lyon took from his pocket the notes which Logan had 
handed him on Friday. "What am I to suppose this first 
clause means, Logan? 'The Company acknowledges the prin- 
ciple that work in its employ creates an equity in the 
business V " 

"In ordinary times, and as a statement of general business 
ideas, it would be simply a rhetorical flourish," Logan frankly 
answered. "In our case, with the choice between abdication 
to enemies, and accommodation of ourselves to a some- 
what idealistic arrangement with our friends, it means a 
pledge to experiment with an idea which the business world 
at large will call Quixotic." 

426 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 



" Would it not be more correct to say experiment with words 
which do not express an idea?" was Mr. Lyon's quiet criti- 
cism. 

"Perhaps the words suit the case all the better, Father, be- 
cause they contain an idea without fully expressing it. I 
have been wishing I knew more about history, to see whether 
it hasn't been the rule that the ideas which people have fol- 
lowed in their creative eras have been suggestive, rather than 
legally precise; more like pillars of fire or cloud than like 
literal statutes. Isn't the Golden Rule an instance of that 
sort? Are we through learning what it means, when we try 
to apply it in new circumstances?" 

"But what beginnings of an idea do these words stand for?" 
pursued Mr. Lyon. His manner was neither intolerant nor ag- 
gressive. He had the bearing of a candid inquirer, yet in 
every word Logan recognized his father's grief that their af- 
fairs were drifting, as he believed, into an uncharted sea. 

"It is rather hard for me, Father, to be the mouthpiece of a 
faith that in one sense has been stamped on me by force. If 
it had not been for the stress of necessity, I might never have 
considered it practicable for the Avery Company to apply the 
idea. I make no predictions whether it will take generations 
or centuries for the idea to set the standard for business in 
general. I am simply convinced that circumstances have put 
us in a position where honest experiment with the idea is the 
only practical policy. In another sense belief in the policy 
has grown up in me from the inside. You were shocked at 
some of the things I said to a bunch of the directors last Spring, 
the day of the strike decision. They were simply sproutings 
that I didn't know the meaning of myself ; but this war has 
affected me as wars on a larger scale always affect the ideas of 
people. Things that I saw in a haze now look clear. The 
idea that I rated as too abstract and refined for this world now 
seems to me as much in order as any progressive thought that 
an active age has substituted for its rule-of-thumb notions. If 
it were not for your inability to accept the idea, Father, I 
could vote with all my heart for pledging the Company to it, 
and I could stake my life on it with the zeal of a new convert." 

"But you have not yet told me what the idea is," reminded 
Mr. Lyon. 

"Why, it's merely carrying one step farther into industry 
the idea which we have been working amateurish experiments 

4 27 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 



with in politics. It's the democratic idea admitted to one 
more range of application. As it appeals to me, it is the idea 
that this human life of ours is men's affairs. That is, every 
time the race as a whole, or some picked specialist in the race, 
hits on a new value, the social programme thereupon has to 
begin to make room for the new details of the problem: — 
first, What place belongs to this new value in the whole scale 
of human interests? and second, How may we open the fairest 
field for every man in the world to earn his way toward his 
share of this new value? Not to go off too far into theory, 
we people in the Avery Company are all men together, in the 
sense that we all alike want to get all the values of life we can ; 
and to most of us the Company is the principal means of mak- 
ing headway toward the purpose. Now having some prop- 
erty, and having some of the right to an opinion, and some 
of the influence that opinion backed by a little property ex- 
erts with our fellow men, are among the values that most men 
want. They need them, whether they know enough to want 
them or not, in order to be in the line of making the most of 
life. Adding' by one's own efforts something necessary to the 
processes of life, is the only title to property and influence that 
the logic of life can in the long run recognize. We are oper- 
ating a property system which already looks to me, and I be- 
lieve it will some day look to everybody, as primitive as the old 
cable cars now look to Chicago people, in contrast with electric 
equipment. The strike has turned the spot-light on this 
property system with the Avery Company as the illustration. 
We have several thousand employees who, in the aggregate, 
are as necessary to the Company as its capital. The 
business is those men's means of leading a man's life, and 
filling out a man's destiny. But there are men who own a 
share apiece of the Company's stock, to whom the law gives 
more right to say their say, and influence the Company's 
policy, than those thousands who have put their whole labor 
time for years into the service of the corporation. Now the 
democratic idea is that business is a product of all the work- 
ers, and that the legal status of all the workers should corre- 
spond with their share in creating and maintaining the busi- 
ness. It implies that there should be a corporate policy and a 
due process of law, without which no worker in the business 
could be put out of his job nor deprived of the voice in the 
business that belongs with the job, any more than the owner 

428 



BETWEEN ERAS 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 



of a share of stock could be deprived of his stock and his vote. 
If I were authorized to put a meaning into that first clause, it 
would start this way : 'We will make it a part of the business 
to find out how many instead of how few of its workers may 
have a property interest and a shareholder's voice in it, and 
also how the distribution of this property and influence may 
be made proportional with each man's service to the 
corporation.' " 

"Is there anything to distinguish that from communism?" 
and Mr. Lyon's manner indicated anxiety more than oppo- 
sition. 

"I'm not sure that I know what communism is," Logan 
answered cautiously; "but if it is a scheme to distribute eco- 
nomic goods on any basis except the proportional value of 
service rendered, it is the precise opposite of the type of de- 
mocracy this memorandum contemplates. The most vital 
thing in Graham's idea of democracy, and I think he is right 
about it, is that it must work out a way for every member of 
society to count at his full manhood value in every part of 
life in which he is interested. Of course our property system 
as it stands represents more than anything else the relative 
fighting force of different economic strata. The farther we 
go toward making reason instead of force the legislature of the 
world, the more we shall see that our present laws of property 
tend to establish a capitalistic oligarchy always growing into 
a hierarchy with a diminishing number of individuals at the 
head. This oligarchy is gaining cumulative power by oper- 
ating an ingenious system of laws based on the fallacy of the 
paramount rights of capitalistic interests. As we recover our 
sanity about the scale of human values, we shall see that the 
system is no longer the best for keeping human achievements 
at their highest level, any more than rubbing two sticks to- 
gether is the best method of getting fire. Whatever may be 
the value of the hierarchy of capital in economizing produc- 
tion, it is probably offset by its arrest of fairness in distribu- 
tion. Even if the hierarchy permitted distributive justice, all 
the humanity in men would sooner or later revolt against 
oligarchy in business, just as it has declared itself against the 
rule of the few in politics. Proportional representation in 
appraising service values in the industrial system must in- 
evitably take the place of capitalistic assignment of stipends 
to the many by the few." 

42& 



FROM CAPITALISM TO DEMOCRACY 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 



For an hour Mr. Lyon continued his inquiry. 

He did not attempt to argue the points, but seemed bent 
solely on finding out exactly what Logan understood the 
proposed compromise to involve. 

In his turn Logan could not help wondering at the ease 
with which he adapted himself to the advocate's part, and at 
his growing zeal for his expanding democratic ideal. 

Nothing in the examination had prepared Logan for its 
sequel. After he saw that his father's questioning was done, 
he had the first feeling that the most serious meaning of the 
interview had not appeared. 

For a few moments Mr. Lyon closed his eyes and resumed 
his posture of reflection. His face was not as immobile as be- 
fore. The play of strong emotion was visible, but beyond 
this Logan had no key to the situation. 

Then the older man evidently passed into a struggle to 
maintain his self-command. He controlled himself other- 
wise, but in spite of his effort his voice was tremulous. His 
look reminded Logan of pictures he had seen of martyrs ut- 
tering their last farewell to earth. His words did not at first 
explain his agitation, but presently their finality told Logan 
that they meant to his father the knell of an era. 

"I have seen the signs of change in this direction for many 
years," Mr. Lyon began, slowly and sadly. "I did not be- 
lieve they would have to be counted with in my day. I can- 
not see how good can come of them, but I believe a higher 
Wisdom overrules. I see that the Company must yield to 
circumstances and accept this compromise as the lesser evil. 
That is my defeat, and it must be my release. I shall resign 
today, and you must take my place. So long as I live I shall 
do my best to help you as loyally as you have supported me." 

Then the solemnity in his voice and look changed to that 
of the penitent. As he spoke out his heaviest grief, he seemed 
to himself to be reading items from the debit side of The 
Great Book of Remembrance: — "I may live long enough to 
make some reparation to the father, and the mother and the 
child. I may earn forgiveness for devoting to business what 
I owed to my boy. I thought it was an irreverent joke of 
Halleck's, but he is right. It is the hardest lesson I have ever 
learned. The only Atonement for any one of us is deliver- 
ing his own line of goods." 

430 



BETWEEN ERAS 



OBITER DICTA 

Every hour is a crisis ; every day a transition. 

Todays vision is tomorrow's foundation. 

If insight fails the wise and prudent, it may 

empower the innocence of babes. 
The strong, the fit, the competent may be no 

part of the column of conquest, and may 

not know it is on the march. 
The world's virility is so rich that humanity 

reaches its goals at last, helped or hindered 

by the most capable. 
The great bad is fear that the end is come. 
Men's discontents dig the channels of their 

progress. 
The world is young ; its destinies are unde- 
veloped ; the potency of its future endorses 

the audacity of its ideals. 
Let us pray not to be there when men's faith 

ceases to proclaim, A better era dawns 

tomorrow! 

FINIS. 



431 



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